


Drawn Together

by sapphirebluerubyredroses



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Multi, OT5, Sense8 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 06:05:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 44,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4210854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphirebluerubyredroses/pseuds/sapphirebluerubyredroses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Glancing up into the just as grimy mirror, he wondered if he'd catch a glimpse of that girl, the girl with the close cropped black hair and razor smile and body made for fighting. The girl who always seemed to have a bruised cheek or swollen lip or blood running down her forearm.</p><p>He was only greeted with the man that had taken her place. His head was shaved, but his dark eyes still sparked with defiance as the girl's had. He was handsome the way a weapon is handsome, and he flaunted the scars that boasted as much.</p><p>This man never seemed to notice him, despite Adam's attempts to converse with him. The girl hadn't either.</p><p>They were one in the same, this man and that girl, but Adam couldn't seem to keep that fact in his mind. Still, he hoped he'd see that girl again, vain as it was. Even as he watched the man push down the waistband of his shorts to press a needle into his buttock, he could not reconcile that fact.</p><p>The man in the mirror took a deep breath, steeling himself for what? Adam didn't know. Rubbing out the injection, he turned from the mirror and disappeared."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Blue** :

Blue was sliding a tray of pizza onto the scratched, warped table top when she heard the soft, soothing classical music under the abusive techno playing over the speaker system. Straightening with a smile more genuine than she had shown all night, she refilled her patrons' glasses before turning to Chialina standing in wait for the next group to seat.

"Whoa, what happened to you?" she asked, eyes wide with surprise as Blue moved towards her, "What happened to that storm cloud always hanging over your head?" She grinned as Blue took her hand and spun her.

"I don't know, but I just suddenly got really happy, and that classical music someone is playing sounds beautiful," Blue explained. She could see the orchestra, lit beneath the stage lights. She could feel the plush cushion of the seat, the armrest pushing coldly against her arm. She could feel the heat radiating off of the woman sitting at her side.

Chialina giggled, turning once more. "You must have super hearing because I don't hear any classical. I'm not sure I'd be able to hear anything over this crap."

Blue froze, staring at her coworker, eyebrows pulled together. "How can you not hear it? It's almost louder than the music in here now."

Pausing in her twirling, Chialina stared at her. "Blue, no, there's no classical playing." Reaching out her hand, she stroked over her forehead. "Honey, are you feeling alright? Maybe you should take the rest of the night off."

"No, I'm fine," Blue muttered, pulling away from her coworker. As the music faded, taken back over by the techno thrumming around her, so did her mood, leaving her crushed beneath the weight of her reality.

Pushing into the kitchen, she deposited her jug in one of the large sinks, stumbling into the bathroom to slam the door closed. She rubbed at her temples, pressing her shoulder blades back into the door.

Sighing heavily, Blue pushed off the door, turning the taps to cold. She splashed her face with water, flicking her hands off into the sink before meeting her tired eyes.

She squeaked, jumping back from sink and the man staring back at her. He was dressing in a suit and crimson tie, dark circles coloring the skin beneath his eyes, same as her own. They widened in surprise.

"Do I know you?" he asked tentatively in a smooth Virginian accent, "Why do you look so tired? Are you alright, miss?"

Blue simply stared back at him, mouth gaping wide. She wanted to lie, but she didn't think she could, not now, not to this man standing in front of her, looking at her through the mirror. "No, no I'm really not-" she began, her words cut short as someone began banging on the door. Her eyes were jerked toward the door, away from the mirror, the man's movements mirroring hers. "What's your-" She stopped, turning back to the mirror only to find her own haggard reflection staring back.

She wanted to cry, or maybe punch something, or maybe both. Flinging the door to the bathroom open, despair flowing from her every pore and rage building just beneath it, she opened her mouth to snarl at whoever was on the other side.

 **Noah** :

"Are you ever going to go the fuck to bed? Have you even slept at all today?" Barrington Welch snapped in the early hours of the morning, glaring at Noah where he sat in front of the computer, staring at the newest underground fighting match in Dublin. He wasn't entirely sure how it was underground if you posted videos every fight, but he wasn't going to complain. "You do realize we have class today, correct?"

"I'm not going," Noah mumbled into his fingers, chin cupped in the palm of his hand.

"What do you **mean** you're not going?" Barry snarled, slamming a hand onto the desk beside his keyboard, "If we miss another day of class, they're going to expel us."

"No, they're going to expel you. I still have a few sick days I can use before I don't have excuses left."

"Sick? You're not sick."

Noah rolled his eyes, as if that really mattered. For Barry's sake though, he muttered, "Tell that to the puke in the bathroom."

"You **left** it there?"

"Maybe… Actually, I'm starting to feel it again." He pressed a hand over his mouth, releasing a strangled sort of gag.

Barry wheeled away from him. "I'm going back to bed before you get me sick."

Watching the underground fighter, Greywaren he called himself, slam his knee into his opponent's abdomen, he felt less of a need to be sick and more of a need to cry and pull out his hair. Breathing deeply, he smiled as the sweet scents and raucous of festival attacked his senses, quickly overriding the sadness welling within him.

Suddenly, he could smell cotton candy and warm beer and buttered popcorn. He could hear children screaming in delight and fear or laughing hysterically as the wheels of a roller coaster trundled by above him. He could taste the sticky sweetness of a funnel cake and vanilla chapstick on his tongue. Trippy carnival music crackled over the speaker system. A girl laughed high and clear, a flash of pleasure warming his body and flushing away the remnants of his despair.

He drifted off to those sounds, settling into a comfortable nap. Before his mind dropped into the darkness of dreaming, he wondered why everything was so incredibly vivid.

 **Adam** :

Adam's cheekbone just below his left eye had been throbbing for hours, morphing into a full blown headache before his shift had finished for the night. He rubbed his hand over his face, groaning as the door to the shop slammed again.

"Adam, just go home already, you look miserable," Boyd said, crouching on the oil stained concrete to look at him beneath the truck he was currently working on.

Shaking his head, Adam rolled out from beneath the truck to riffle through his tool box. "I can't. I promised my girlfriend that I'd take her to the fair. If I can't deal with a little headache, how will I be able to keep that promise to her?" Actually, it wasn't just a little headache. His head was screaming at the top of its lungs with every pump of his heart, and his body ached as if he'd been fighting his father all day. His spine sobbed as he laid back down and slid beneath the truck once more.

His boss snorted, shaking his head. "You and that girl. When are you finally going to ask her to marry you? You would bend yourself in half if she asked you to, you know that?"

Adam grimaced from even the thought of marrying the girl he was dating now. He liked her well enough, but she was simply too moneyed, too pretentious, too vapid for him to love. "I'd have to save enough money for a ring, and with college, I just can't afford a ring, wedding and supporting another human."

"Ah, son, I'm sure she'd help if you asked."

"Boyd, you know why I can't do that, won't do that."

Rolling his eyes, his boss stood. "Just get going, Adam. Take some Advil and go have fun with your girl."

"After I finish this."

It took Adam another hour before he'd finished what he'd been working on. His headache had faded, but as he pushed into the small bathroom the shop provided, he knew that even riding the carousel would be an ordeal.

Sighing, he set to scrubbing the grime from his hands, his girlfriend hated it when he picked her up without getting most of work off of him. Glancing up into the just as grimy mirror, he wondered if he'd catch a glimpse of that girl, the girl with the close cropped black hair and razor smile and body made for fighting. The girl who always seemed to have a bruised cheek or swollen lip or blood running down her forearm.

He was only greeted with the man that had taken her place. His head was shaved, but his dark eyes still sparked with defiance as the girl's had. He was handsome the way a weapon is handsome, and he flaunted the scars that boasted as much.

This man never seemed to notice him, despite Adam's attempts to converse with him. The girl hadn't either.

They were one in the same, this man and that girl, but Adam couldn't seem to keep that fact in his mind. Still, he hoped he'd see that girl again, vain as it was. Even as he watched the man push down the waistband of his shorts to press a needle into his buttock, he could not reconcile that fact.

The man in the mirror took a deep breath, steeling himself for what? Adam didn't know. Rubbing out the injection, he turned from the mirror and disappeared.

 **Ronan** :

Ronan's fist connected pleasingly with the nose of his opponent, the cartilage shattering beneath his knuckles. He pressed forward, throwing another punch into the man's jaw, pouring all of his ferocity and anger into each strike.

The crowd around the ring screamed their approval, cheering Ronan's name at the top of their voices, filling the warehouse to overflowing. They called to him, urging him on, telling him to beat the other man's face into the ground.

He gave them what they wanted. The match was over long before he'd hoped, his body vibrating with unspent adrenaline. His opponent lay face down in the ring, blood beginning to pool beneath him. Idly, Ronan wondered if he would drown in his own blood before the medics or officials got to him.

The crowd was chanting his name, stomping their feet on the concrete floor, shaking the building with their enthusiasm and blood lust. They only grew louder as one of the mediators took his wrist, throwing their hands into the air. "You're winner of tonight's fights! The Greywaren!" he shouted into a microphone, only serving to send the crowd into a lustful frenzy, "Watch him face more opponents next meet!"

Ronan was ushered off the stage, the crowd reaching out to touch him as he descended the stone steps. They were pushed back quickly, not soon enough to hold back the shot of claustrophobia that soured his triumphant mood. Holding tight to his sweat soaked tank top, pulling it out away from his body so none of his definition nor his scars could be seen, he stumbled towards the small back room he'd been lent. Slamming the door closed behind him, he slipped down the cool metal, burying his head between his knees.

Despair washed through his system. It was all he could do to keep the tears from rushing down his face. Really, what was the point of it all, fighting and clawing for life? It would all be useless in the end.

Just as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone in a rush of rage.

' _Hey, don't be like that_ ,' a man urged, his meaty, sweaty hand pressing into the soft flesh of the back of his thigh, ' _We just want to have a little fun_.'

Jumping up, Ronan slapped the man's hand away, revulsion roiling through his system. "Don't touch me," he snarled.

' _Oh, little girl's got some fire to her. Come on, when does your shift end? We can have a little fun afterwards_ ,' the man coaxed, his hand finding its way back to his thigh, this time squeezing the warm, pliable flesh.

Without thinking, Ronan struck out, crushing the man's nose beneath his knuckles. "I said don't touch me!" Pain rocketed up his arm. He blinked, staring at the blood trickling down the concrete wall.

 **Gansey** :

Gansey had been hearing those voices as long as he could remember. They crept into his mind in the times between sleep and consciousness, or when he wasn't paying a lick of attention to his teacher droning on and on about subjects that he already knew too much about, taking to dreaming of Welsh kings and magic. They spoke of mundane, everyday things as if they were having a conversation with another person. Sometimes, they spoke in accented English, or German, or another language. Sometimes, it was only their laughter or sobs rippling through his mind. Other times, they would go on long monologues about a topic he was clueless on. That night had been the first time he'd ever had a face to put to a voice.

So, it was no surprise when he heard the softest of the voices talking to himself as he often did. ' _Looks like a thunderstorm. Hope Barry can make it back safely_.'

Gansey jumped in his seat as thunder, loud and percussive, rumbled through the auditorium. Surprise and a little bit of fear trembled through him. Rain pounded down on the roof, overshadowing the quiet conversations couples and families were having during the break. He dug his fingers into the arm rests, sucking in shuddering breaths before forcing them out slowly to instill some calm into his being.

' _I hope Barry gets back soon_ ,' the voice whispered, trembling.

"Dick… Dick… Richard, are you alright?" Helen's voice broke through the rain and another clap of thunder, bringing him out of his own mind. He glanced up at her through quivering lashes, finding worry lacing her beautiful features. Her voice dropped lower as she leaned in close. "Are you… feeling alright? Do we need to go home?"

"I'm fine," Gansey told her, forcing his muscles to relax beneath her warm hand, but he could tell she didn't believe him.

"Let's go home. Mom will understand that we couldn't stay for the entire performance," she decided, pulling him to his feet and into the aisle. He didn't protest as she dragged him from the auditorium, the rain still pounding in his ears.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a small update, I just decided who Adam's girlfriend is, so we'll be meeting her soon enough.

**Gansey** :

The plane shuddered around him. Over the intercom, the pilot said with more calm than the storm they were currently flying through warranted, "Sorry about that folks. Looks like we're going to be expecting some more turbulence for the next hour or so of out flight. We ask that you remain seated with your seatbelts fastened. We will lift the seatbelt sign when it is safe to do so. At that time, the stewardesses will resume handing out refreshments." The intercom went dead, leaving the cabin silent.

Somewhere behind Gansey someone whimpered helplessly, their breath coming in quick, short gasps. He wanted to reach around, to comfort and calm them, but he'd never done well managing his own panic attacks and doubted he would do any better with someone else's.

Glancing out his window, he watched the lightning flash, lighting up rooms within the clouds. A gasp drew his eyes to what had previously been the empty seat beside him.

The girl from the night before, her eyes sparking in wonder and the spikes of her dark hair tickling his nose, leaned across his lap, nearly pressing her forehead to the window. "This is amazing. We're really flying," she whispered reverently, jumping in surprise as the plane shuddered violently around them once more.

The person behind Gansey squeaked, going silent halfway through the noise as if they'd bitten down on their lip.

Gansey wrapped a steadying hand around her shoulder, trying his best to ignore the warmth she exuded. "Don't worry, it's just turbulence," he told her, releasing her shoulder as quickly as he had grabbed it.

She sat up slowly, still staring out the window. "It's as if Zues is pissed and throwing a temper tantrum," she muttered to herself. Sitting back in her seat, she scrutinized him. "I wasn't worried. If anything happens, you'll be the one in trouble, not me."

He laughed through his nose, glancing back out the window. "It really is something, isn't it?"

"Yes," she agreed, leaning back over him to get a better look at the flashing lightning, her forearm pressing into his thigh, her shoulder brushing his chest.

Tentatively, he asked, "You're the girl from the mirror last night, right?"

Her eyes dropped from the window, and she pushed back from him. "Woman, I'm the woman from the mirror."

"Are you…" He paused, eyes raking over her face, taking in just how tired she looked, everything that had been covered up by the dim fluorescents. "Where are you right now if you're not here?"

"As in where I live? Or as in where I am currently sitting wondering if my mother is ever going to come and do this reading before I have to catch my shift at my mother's friend's used bookstore?"

"Both, I suppose," he said, a slow grin spreading across his lips.

Rolling her eyes around the compartment, she pursed her lips. They blinked as one, and in an instant, they were sitting in a room lit by weak afternoon sunlight, two decks of rectangular cards waiting patiently on thin sheets of plum velvet. The girl –woman- sat on a rickety old chair with fabric worn so that there were bald spots in some places. "Chicago is where I live, and this is my home. My family, all of the women that live in this house with me, are psychics and sensates, two things that supposedly go hand in hand. I'm not either, the only one out of my entire family, or at least, that's what I thought, but now…" A smile pulled up the corners of her mouth. Her eyes focused, and she raised an eyebrow at him. "What about you? Where is home to you? I know you're on an airplane, but where are you headed? Why are you going there? What's your name?"

Gansey filed the information she had told him away for later retrieval. "My name is Gansey. I suppose by definition, home is Washington D.C., though we're originally from Virginia, but really, home is everywhere. I travel a lot, searching for artifacts and finding things no one else can find. Right now, I'm headed back to London for assistance with my thesis from one of my colleagues. What is your name?"

"My name is Blue."

Gansey raised an eyebrow. "As in the color?"

Blue's eyebrows became very pointy in a very short span of time. "Yes, is there something wrong with that?"

"No, of course not, it's just an odd name. I like the name Jane."

"Like Gansey isn't a strange name? You are not going to call me that." Before their argument could range passed playful banter, a yip from behind them pulled them back into the compartment of the airplane. "What was that?" Unbuckling and flipping to look behind them, the pair found a girl of only twelve clutching at the armrests, her eyes screwed shut. "Are you going to do anything?"

Gansey looked back to Blue, apprehension written clear of his face. "What would I do? I don't know how to help her."

Sighing, Blue took his hand and pulled him around to the empty seat beside the girl. "Here, let me show you," she said gently, resting just her fingertips on the back of the girl's hand.

 **Blue** :

"Blue, what are you doing? I told you the client cancelled. Don't you have a shift at Nino's today?"

Blue blinked, pulling herself back to reality. Gansey was gone, but the feel of his hand in hers lingered, and her fingers were still curled as if holding that girl's hand. She took a measure of pleasure knowing she'd calmed that girl down, and took a measure of hope that Gansey would keep her calm for the rest of the flight.

She flexed her fingers, glancing back up at her mother. "No, I don't have a shift at Nino's tonight. I don't have a shift for the next few days actually, so I took an extra at the bookstore today."

Maura raised an eyebrow at her daughter, leaning against the doorjamb. "Why?"

"I punched one of the patrons in the face and broke his nose." She raised her hand, pointing at the scabs on the back of her knuckles. A man's voice, sharp and low, laughed in her ear. She frowned, wondering who this new voice belonged to. She was almost positive if didn't belong to Gansey.

Her mother's other eyebrow jumped to join the first. "Why?"

"He kept touching me even after I told him to stop," Blue explained with a shrug, jumping to her feet, "I have to get to the bookstore. When I get home, can you tell me more about sensates? I always hear stuff about being psychic, but I don't get to hear about being a sensate all that often."

Maura's eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. "Yes, of course. Why do you want to know all of a sud-"

"Bye, Mom!" Blue shouted over her shoulder before she could finish, banging through the front door.

Her mother watched her mount her bike with narrowed eyes, calling after her, "Don't punch anyone in the face tonight!"

Blue raised a hand in goodbye. She had just turned the corner onto the next street when she felt a body pressing into her back, larger than her, but smaller than most. "What's your name?" she asked the newcomer, keeping her eyes focused on the road. Swerving around a car that had suddenly stopped in front of her, she flew around another corner, narrowly avoiding a jaywalking pedestrian.

"Noah," the newcomer breathed, awe in his voice as he said, "Where are we? This is amazing."

"Chicago," Blue told him, looking around at her home.

"America?" Noah asked excitedly, "Where are you going right now?"

"A bookstore. I have work," she told him.

"Can I come with you?" He touched her hair tentatively, pulling his hand away after a moment. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to touch your hair without permission, it's just so spikey."

Smiling, Blue sat up straighter, glancing over her shoulder to see his star struck expression as he stared up and around. "It's alright. You can come if you really want to. It'll be boring through."

"I really want to though."

 **Noah** :

"Czerny, focus," Barry growled, snapping his fingers in front of Noah's nose.

Frowning, Noah blinked, eyes focusing on the finger Barry was lowering to a map. He wondered silently if he could break that finger off. He really hated when Barry did stuff like that, snapping at him like a dog, putting his finger in his face or poking him in the chest, but he hated confrontation more, and simply damped down the urge.

Barry was gesturing to the map, an excited, willful, terrifying smile spreading his lips wide. "See? If we go in through here, we can get to the vault in less than a minute. After that, we'll just have to…"

Noah's attention drifted again, focusing instead on the man standing at his side, staring down at what Barry was explaining. He wore only a pair of spandex shorts and thick wrappings around his hands. Sweat dripped down along his chin and arms. "That's a fucking terrible plan," he said, Irish accent thick and hardly understandable, uncrossing his arms to press his hands to the table, "There's so much that could go wrong here. Dude, you're totally going to end up with a bullet in your forehead with this."

"You're the Greywaren," Noah mumbled.

"So, we'll do it the night after tomorrow," Barry concluded, dragging Noah's attention back to the map, "We'll go over the plan again before we do it, but that's the gist."

"Okay," Noah replied, watching as his best friend stood and disappeared into the little quad area they shared with three other pairs of roommates to get a beer. "You're the Greywaren," he repeated, looking back to the man watching him.

"And you watch my fights, apparently. Where am I? This isn't my home, and who the hell are you? That guy is going to get you killed with his stupid plan," the Greywaren told him, staring back at him.

Noah sighed, dropping his head back against his chair, "Probably."

"Then why don't you tell him no?"

"Because he's the only friend I have." Noah tried to ignore the hum of sadness that he whispered over his ear like a breath of wind.

The Greywaren blinked without pity at him. "That's not a reason to let him get you killed."

"Are you offering to take his place if he decides to punch me in the face and leave me without anyone else?"

He sneered. "We don't even know each other's names."

"My name is Noah."

The Greywaren stared at him for a silent moment, fingers pressing down into the flesh of his arm. "Ronan."

 **Ronan** :

Ronan frowned, grumbling as his reminder sounded somewhere by his ear. He'd missed his injection time the day before because of the fight, and had to do it in the early hours of the morning, so Kavinsky had set a reminder with the most obnoxious ringtone he could find on his phone. Dragging himself from Kavinsky's bed where he'd collapsed in his workout clothing, he shuffled into the bathroom in search of the injection kit he kept there in case he stayed overnight. What he found in his kit was a full bottle of testosterone and no needles. He ground his teeth.

"K, I should break your teeth," Ronan snarled, shuffling back into the room and stripping the covers from the bed.

"What the fuck, man? What are you yelling for?" Kavinsky growled back, grasping for the hem of the blanket, "I'm naked, man. It's so cold in here my balls are going to fall off."

Dropping the blanket to the floor, Ronan went in search of his boxers, or a pair of pants, or really anything to get dressed in other than his sweaty clothing. "No, they're not. You used all my needles."

Kavinsky rolled his eyes as he rolled over to face Ronan. "No, I didn't. I put them up in the closet so my mom wouldn't use them, asshole. Stop being a girl and go take your medicine."

The barb stung more than Ronan would ever admit. "I think you should suck my ass," he spat, rummaging around through the insurmountable amount of crap that was in the closet.

"Already did that today."

Ronan violently threw a pair of pants and shirt at Kavinsky. He moved back into the bathroom, quickly sterilizing his needle and administering his injection. When he came out, Kavinsky was pulling the shirt over his head.

"I am the best boyfriend, don't you think?"

"You'd be a better one if we were doing something other than being in this house."

Kavinsky pulled Ronan down, crushing their mouths together, biting Ronan's lips as he pulled away. "Change and we will."

…..

' _I punched one of the patrons in the face and broke his nose_.'

The woman's voice ran through his mind again, on replay from when he'd it early. Again, Ronan let out a bark of laughter, grabbing a napkin to cough up the beer he'd inhaled. Her statement only seemed to get funnier each time his heard it, and soon he was sure he'd suck up something in his laughter that he wouldn't so easily be able to rid his body of.

A hand thumped against his back, steady and constant. "What are you laughing about? It had to have been quite funny to choke, but I must tell you, second hand choking isn't very pleasant. If I may ask, where are we?"

Wiping at his mouth, taking another long pull from his glass, he looked over at the man standing beside him. The man was impeccably dressed, dressed far too nicely for the club they were in. "Dublin. You must be really fucked up to not remember where you are, buddy. Before you start hitting on me, I already have a boyfriend."

The man rolled his eyes. "Lovely confidence, I'm not interested in people in that way, thank you, and no, I am not intoxicated, I'm on a plane to London at the moment."

Ronan could hear the rush of pressurized air through the compartment, feel the icy air conditioning raising goose bumps along his arms, smell the stale body odor of the other flyers, taste the sharp taste of hard liquor. "What way are you interested in people, then?"

"I'm interested in learning about them," the man explained.

"I think," Ronan started, pausing to drain the rest of his beer, "That we should dance."

The man smiled. "I thought you said you had a boyfriend. Won't he get jealous?"

"You can't get jealous of someone you can't see."

 **Adam** :

Adam sat in his little room above Saint Agnes church wondering when he would be completely free of his father. Despite having his own apartment now, his father still found time and ways to invade his life, his new home, leaving him bruised and hating every time. He rubbed at his face, ignoring how every part of his being throbbed when he moved.

He wished he could fall asleep. He wished he could focus long enough to study for the test he had on Monday. He wished he could do anything other than sit there and think about his horrible father, his horrible life, how tired he was, but he didn't have work and his girlfriend had class all afternoon.

Standing, he paced the length of his room, running his hands through his hair. He needed a distraction before he broke something. Flipping on the small, old radio his girlfriend had 'accidentally' left behind the last time she'd been there, he adjusted the antenna until the station she'd previously had it on could be heard loud and clear.

The song was electric and fast, vibrating through his body. His pulse beat in time with the tempo of the music. The words were filthy and intoxicating. He immediately began to relax.

He was dancing before he'd made the conscious decision to, his body moving and flowing with the music, his eyes slipping shut. There were hands on his hips, one set above the other, breath on his neck. There were hands in his hair, a girl's laughter in his ear. His hands were on strong shoulders, moving along warm skin, up a throat that tensed beneath his fingers.

The room was hot with humidity and lust. His body hummed, alive for the first time in longer than he could remember. Laughter, breathy and delighted, sounded around him. The set of hands higher on his waist moved to the two bodies at his sides.

He grinned, pulled the body in front of him closer, pressing their bodies together. They moved as one. The body he grasped at pushed him back into the trio behind him. He was encased in writhing, gyrating bodies, hips swaying with the hands pressing into his sides.

"God, you're beautiful," a gruff voice whispered against his ear, breath hot and moist.

Heat pooled in Adam's stomach. He gasped, dragging the voice's owner as close as he could. "I wish I could stay here forever," he whispered, dragging his lips along the man's jaw, finding his lips.

They kissed slow and deep and heated. The trio moved away from them, finding their own rhythm with each other. Adam's back bowed as one hand slid along his spine and the other moved to cup his ass. He pushed his hand up the back of the man's neck, sliding it along a shaved head. They pulled away, pressing their foreheads together.

Adam's eyes fluttered open, his face burning with an unwilled blush, and he stared into the face he saw almost every time he looked in the mirror. He gasped, jerking his head back from the contact, but not their bodies. "You're the man I see in the mirror," he whispered.


	3. Chapter 3

**Noah** :

Noah was in that space between sleeping and waking, that grey area where you are blinking into the present, where you can see your surrounds, but your dream still owns you, when the taste of vanilla flooded his mouth, warm lips moving with his. A tongue, soft and searching, licked at the roof of his mouth. A warm body pressed down over his, knees on either side of his hips, skirt rucked up her thighs. Her elbows boxed in his face, fingers pulling gently on his hair.

His body was heated, burning. His hands were pressed to the woman's sides, his thumbs skimming the sensitive skin just beneath the wire of her bra through her thin dress.

"Oh, Adam," she sighed into his mouth, fingers roaming down to smooth over his cheek, "What am I going to do with you?"

"Take me with you across the ocean to meet your family and friends, and attend your fancy school that sends you abroad," he told her jokingly, smiling against her lips.

"I would if you would let me," she said, "Your school is my sister school, dork. It has just as good an abroad program. I thought you said you applied for it."

Noah was sleepy and groggy and possibly slightly hung over from the night before, but he would have known that voice anywhere, despite not having heard it except for over the phone three times a year. Disgust, fast and sharp, clawed up his throat. "Oh god," he said, scrambling up against the headboard of his bed. It did not rid him of any sensation. He still felt her lips on his neck, and the hand that slowly slipped lower and lower. "That's so gross!" he whined, scrubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand, slapping at the hand he couldn't see. He was going to throw up.

Suddenly, the hand was gone. When he peeled his eyes open once more, Adam was sitting up across from him.

"Are you alright?" he asked, looking over Noah with a slight amount of concern.

A girl with blonde hair was snuggled into his side, breathing deeply as if in sleep, though only a moment had passed since she'd taken up the position. She was looking up at him with clear blue eyes, her expression watchful and a little wondering. She remained silent though, simply observing. She glanced over her shoulder for a short moment, rolling her eyes in exasperation.

"No, not really," Noah told him, dragging at his lips and tongue with more vigor.

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Yeah, not making out with my sister and waking me up." He could feel with others stirring, dragging themselves from sleep with the magnitude of his disturbance. They mumbled sleepily in Noah and Adam's ears.

Adam met the girl's eyes. "I'm sorry? I didn't know."

"You should be. She's a lesbian."

The others were suddenly wide awake, scrambling to pick up the pieces of their conversation and their consciousness. "Be kind, rewind," Blue and Ronan asked together as Gansey asked, "What did we miss?"

Adam and Noah ignored them.

The girl reached up, smoothing her finger between Adam's furrowed brows. "Who are you talking to?" she asked quietly, sitting up slowly to stare at the spot Adam was staring. When he didn't answer right away, she looked back to him. "Don't worry, I'm one too. Who are you talking to? What did they say?"

"My name is Noah," Noah supplied helpfully, staring at the girl in a mixture of anger and frustration.

Adam returned her gaze, mumbling, "His name is Noah. He told me he's your brother and that you're… he said that you're gay."

The girl scowled distastefully. "Noah Czerny?" At Noah's nod, Adam nodded the affirmative. She turned towards the wall quickly, snapping, "Would you guys stop chattering? There's too much noise in my head to concentrate, assholes." As she turned back, she was there with them, sitting both at Adam's side and against the wall between them. "Noah Czerny, you are an asshole too. I should construct a new one for you! Why did you never tell me?" Her mouths moved in sync, the boys jumping between the two to pick which version to watch.

Picking the version closest to him, Noah bristled as he rarely did with anyone other than his little sister. "Who is the asshole, now? This goes two ways, Natalie. I didn't find out about this-" He waved his hand between himself and Adam. "-until recently. Like two days ago, just recently. Oh, and I don't know what Mom has been teaching you, but you can't just go leading people on when you feel like it, pretending to be a self-absorbed straight girl.

"Hey, I resent that statement! I could be bisexual!" She flapped her hand at someone they couldn't see, snapping her teeth at them playfully.

Noah threw her a withering look. "Natalie, you're about as bisexual as I am interested in sex, or genders, or really much of anything."

She opened her mouth to retort, then stopped herself and rolled her eyes. "I see your point."

"Wait, wait, wait," Adam said, his accent thick on his tongue, "You two are related?" The pair nodded. "And you like girls?" Natalie nodded. "Then why are you dating me? What has been the whole point?"

"Adam, I was going to tell you, but I needed to trust you first," she explained with a sigh, glaring at her brother. Her expression softened to one of shared pain. "Our parents aren't too accepting of those who do not conform to their ideals. Too bad for my parents, they only got one of three who does. I like you well enough, Adam, just not in the 'get in your pants' like."

' _Woah, that totally blows_ ,' Ronan's voice supplied unhelpfully and slightly sarcastically somewhere far off. Blue shushed him, a sharp snap of teeth following the sound.

Rubbing at his temples, Noah glanced over to where Barry still slept. He lowered his voice, "I've got to go before my roommate wakes up. Our alarm is about to go off. We're not done talking, Natalie. We'll talk when you get back."

"Aright, brother dearest," she said, smiling and blowing him a sarcastic kiss before he cut the connection off, silencing the others' voices as well.

**Adam** :

Natalie threw her arms around Adam's neck, holding him close to her body. "I'm going to miss you, Adam. I'm sorry you had to find out that way, but I would enjoy it greatly if you and I could remain friends."

Adam tightened his arms around her waist, lifting her from the ground, making her giggle. "Of course, and I'll be your fake boyfriend whenever you need me to be. That's what friends do for each other, right? Maybe I'll see you in Berlin one day."

"I really hope that's true," she said, smiling against his neck, "I would love to show you around Berlin one day, and you'd be able to meet my brother in the flesh." Kissing him on the cheek, she slid back down to the floor. "I've got to catch my flight. I'll contact you when I land, maybe between flight as well, or on the flight. Would that… be okay?"

"Of course, why would you even ask that?" he asked, rubbing his hand up and down her arm soothingly.

She smiled. "Well, most people don't like to talk to their exes right after breaking up with them, you know?"

"It won't be a problem. To tell you the truth, I think I may be bisexual, and I may have kissed a man while dancing with him very inappropriately… while he was in Dublin," he told her in a quiet, confiding tone, a grin on his lips.

Natalie threw her head back, laughing loudly. "I'm surprised it's taken you this long to realize." Patting his cheek affectionately, she kissed his lips one last time. "I'll see you. Keep being strong, Adam."

"I will." He remained where he stood, watching her until she disappeared through security.

"I'm sorry that you two parted on such terms."

Adam turned, finding someone whose voice he recognized, but whose face he did not. "That seems to be going around," he muttered a little bitterly, taking in the man before him in one quick gaze. He was handsome, bred from the same species that Natalie had been, kingly to her queenly. His shoulders were straight in the way someone who has never had to work for a living are.

Gansey nodded, uncrossing his arms, holding out a steady hand. "You are Adam, correct? You can call me Gansey." A smile split across his lips as Adam grasped his hand. "Adam, what do you know of sensates, or if you know don't know what that is, what about Welsh Kings?"

Startled, all of his knowledge of the subjects spilled from his lips unbidden, only broadening this strange man's smile.

**Gansey** :

Gansey stumbled, catching himself on the edge of his bedroom door. Dizzy nausea swam over him, his vision blurring and distorting. A wave of giggling contentment rushed over him, and he slowly sank to the hardwood beneath him. He leaned his head back against the wall, the nausea slowing, but still bubbling just below the surface.

"Gansey, are you alright? You appear a bit intoxicated." Mallory, Gansey's old and crotchety flat mate, stood over him, service dog at his side. He stared down at him, eyebrow raised quizzically. "Really, Gansey, I don't mind you having a few drinks, but getting falling down drunk seems a little excessive. I'd rather not you be here if that is your plan for tonight."

"I'm not drunk," Gansey told him, words slurring unconvincingly along his tongue, "But… one of the others is… I think. Fuck, I can't concentrate."

"Well, when you are sufficiently not intoxicated, you can explain to me what that meant. For now, do not break anything." Mallory shuffled off, leaving Gansey with a static filled brain and alcohol heavy limbs.

Pawing his bedroom door open, Gansey collapsed beside his bed and kicked his door closed. The papers and pictures and maps covering the four walls of his room fluttered, settling silently to watch him curiously.

There were lips on his neck, warm hands clutching at his hips, pulling him forward, a knee sliding between his. The hands held him with bruising force, resisting any movements he made to pull away. Long fingers jerked at his belt, popping the button of his pants. "Come on Lynch," a voice, husky and horny and intoxicated, whispered along his jaw, "It's been two days. Stop being such a girl."

"I am not a girl," Gansey, or whoever he was experiencing the event through, growled, "Don't fucking touch me."

"Don't be like that, babe," the man growled right back, nipping at an exposed collar bone then licking a stripe along a raised scar.

"Stop," Gansey snarled more forcefully. He knew now, knew this was the fighter, the one who seemed to be at odds with Blue almost constantly. This was Ronan, the man who had invited him to dance.

Lust cooled by apprehension welled in him. He didn't want this, didn't want this man's bruising grip on him, didn't want to feel his teeth biting into his skin. He couldn't get away.

Pulling his mind back to him, focusing, Gansey shoved the man's hands away, scrambling to his feet. "He said don't touch him!" he shouted, stepping away from the surprised eyes and the burst of anger that flooded them.

"Fuck you, Lynch. Why don't you go fuck yourself," the man spat.

"Gladly," Gansey muttered, spinning on a heel and finding his way to the front door. There were three cars there. A white Mitsubishi that he'd decided wasn't a Ronan car, a small, tiny sports car that wasn't a Ronan car either, and a black BMW. That, that was definitely a Ronan car.

Fishing the keys from a jeans pocket, he slid into the car and started it.

"Thank you," Ronan whispered, words reluctant.

"I only did what was right. Now tell me how to get you home."

**Ronan** :

Ronan woke in a hideous mood. His head was pounding with a hangover and his stomach roiled and twisted as if he were about to get his period again after not having it for the past year and a half. On instinct, he rolled out of bed, stumbling into the bathroom. Dropping to his toilet, he glared at his boxers accusingly, waiting to see that red stain indicating the end of his life for a week, but there was no blood there.

He sighed in relief. Saved by having a dick.

"Is nothing sacred anymore?" a woman groaned.

His head snapped up, eyes narrowing. "Who the fuck are you?"

"I should be asking **you** that," the woman replied coolly, tucking the end of her towel between her breasts. She stepped out of the bathtub, black hair dripping with water, steam filling the small bathroom. "You are in **my** bathroom after all. If you must know, though, my name is Blue."

"That's a fucking stupid name."

"So is 'Ronan'," she spat back, stepping over to the pile of clothing she'd left on the bathroom counter. "Noah told me about you," she explained after finding his vaguely confused and slightly suspicious eyes narrowed at her.

As Ronan's stomach twisted again, a smirk curled up the corners of his mouth. "So, I thought that it would be so very kind of me to pop in and…"

Blue glanced at him cautiously. She didn't like the lilting tone of laughter to his words. "And what?" she asked, returning her underwear to the clothing pile.

"Well, I hate to be the bringer of bad news," Ronan said in a tone that implied he was taking every bit of amusement that he could from this, "But Mother Nature is in town. She wants her bloody pillows back. She's pretty pissed that you've kept them for a month."

Blue stared at him for a long moment. "No, you've got to be wrong. She's not supposed to come get her pillows for another two weeks!"

"Tell that to my body which is currently trying to give those pillows back. Mother Nature is trying to carve them from me with a dull knife, and I do not appreciate the feeling. Seriously, this would have been my main reason for letting them remove my uterus if I wasn't a guy."

Blue whined petulantly. "Move," she ordered, grabbing a pad from beneath the sink. "This is so stupid. It's all your guys' fault. All that testosterone is fucking with my cycle."

Ronan moved to the edge of the tub, politely averting his eyes off into the middle-distance. "I'm almost positive hormones don't work the same as emotions do with whatever this is."

"I'm still going to blame it on you four," she told him bitterly, ripping open the package.

Ronan looked back as she stood, pulling up her underwear. "Blame us all you want, it still won't change the fact that your ovaries and uterus are going to war."

She shrugged this time, moving back to the bathroom counter. "A girl can dream."

"A girl can also wish. That doesn't mean that her wish will come true."

"It did for you."

Ronan didn't have anything to say to that.

**Blue** :

Blue groaned, leaning back in her chair. Her head was throbbing with that hangover Ronan was happily sharing with their cluster, and her period didn't help the matter. Silently, she wished her mother had not stolen Mr. Gray for the evening so he could instead help her with her Biology and Psychology homework.  
After a short moment of aborted movements and burning her tongue with her tea, she sat forward again. ' _The longer I bitch and complain, the longer it'll take to finish it_.'

"That protein formula looks a little off."

Blue glanced over her shoulder where Adam was leaning. She'd never had a one on one with him. Granted, this had only been a thing for less than a week, but she still felt uncomfortable not knowing this boy. She wanted to know all of them inside out. She wanted to know them as well as she knew herself. She wanted them to know her better than she knew herself.

"I know, I just can't figure it out. I finished the rest of it, but just this problem is giving me hell," she explained, tapping her pen against it. "Maybe… maybe if I switch this with this and add another of these?" she suggested, looking back at him.

Adam tilted his head, considering. "Do it, and tell me how it turns out. I'm going to work on some paperwork for a little bit."

"Sounds good to me." They worked in comfortable silence, pens scratching across paper. "Ah! I got it!" Blue shouted, jumping from her chair, "Thanks, Adam, that was the last of my Bio homework. Want to help me with my Psych homework?"

"If you help me with this form," Adam replied with a smile as she rounded the table.

"Sure." She leaned over his shoulder. "You're trying to go abroad? The paperwork is a bitch, but I think it'll be worth it in the end. I just put in my packet. Where are you trying to go?"

Adam shrugged. "I was thinking Italy or Germany, but I'm hoping for Germany."

"I put mine in for Spain or England, but I'm hoping for England," Blue told him, smiling, "Let's get this paperwork done. Let's get you to Germany."


	4. Chapter 4

**Adam** :

"Don't worry, Adam, this form is perfect. You'll be off to Germany in no time, and you've already been guaranteed a job at the school library in compensation for taking off time from your other jobs here. We have another round of study abroad coming up as soon as two weeks for the Spring-Summer semester right after Spring Break. I would start packing my bags, Mr. Parrish," the guidance counselor told him, smiling winningly at him. His eyes travelled up and down Adam, making no effort to hide his interest. It had been happening ever since he'd come in a few weeks back. Even after Natalie, he wasn't used to being appraised as if he had worth, as if he was wanted.

He forced a smile onto his lips, ignoring the tick of anger and jealousy, irrational and hot, that sparked at the base of his skull. "Thank you, I'll be sure to. Thank you for all the help."

The man smiled. "Of course. Don't hesitate to call me for anything. Don't forget that party I told you about. I would love to see you there."

' _I'm sure you would_ ,' Adam thought nastily, a sneer at the edges of his lips.

Pushing away the strange emotions, not allowing his smile to falter, he nodded before turning and fleeing from the room. He slammed into the bathroom, checking the lone stall the male bathroom had before locking the door. Dropping his satchel onto the counter, he stared into the mirror, waiting, hoping, wondering if he would see him.

Patience was something he was good at, so he stood there, staring into a silver surface, waiting for someone who may never turn up.

Just as he was ready to give up, go to the class he was about to miss, Ronan took his place in the mirror. He was running his fingers over the bruises beneath his eyes, the fading green-yellow splotch across his cheekbone, the circle of a bite mark over his shoulder, then down to the raised scars beneath the muscle of his chest. His fingers were long and delicate, gently running along his skin, as if trying to learn himself, know himself.

When his eyes flickered back to his face, dark and searching, his hands stilled, and he reeled back with a hissed, "What the actual fuck?" His arms flew up subconsciously, crossing and covering his scars.

Adam stepped back, embarrassment burning a trail up his neck. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he said quickly, dropping his eyes, "I wasn't trying to be creepy."

"Well, you fucking were," Ronan snapped.

Adam curled further in on himself. "Sorry," he repeated.

They were silent, Adam stealing glances up at Ronan every few moments, Ronan keeping his eyes trained on him. Sighing as he grabbed a tank top, pulling it over his head, Ronan said, "Okay, spill it. Why do you look like someone kicked your puppy? Does this with have to do with Noah's sister? Because I'm really not equipped to deal with that bullshit."

Adam blinked at him, mouth opening and closing with each response he considered. He couldn't exactly deny that his best friend returning to Germany had killed all good will he'd been building since moving away from his father, but he was sure it hadn't been the reason for his mood. "I… I don't know," he told Ronan truthfully, "I just know that I wanted to see you again." The heat at his neck found its way to his cheeks where his pulse beat rapidly beneath the thin skin, and he spluttered.

Ronan ran a hand over his shaved head, staring off at something Adam couldn't see. "Does it have something to do with that creepy ass counselor dude you were talking to?"

There was that spike of jealousy and anger he'd felt early. Adam wondered silently if Ronan was where that one lone, out of place thought had come from as well.

When Adam didn't reply, Ronan offered, "Let's go get a drink then."

Adam couldn't hold back his snort. "I don't drink."

Ronan rolled his eyes. "Goody two shoes, figures. Fine, then let's go dance."

"We're not on the same continent, let alone in the same country," Adam pointed out.

Ronan rolled his eyes hard enough that Adam was sure it had hurt. "That obviously didn't stop us last time."

**Ronan** :

Ronan snarled in something close to agony, curling in on himself. He'd forgotten just how painful periods were, but Blue's, admittedly, were especially painful, mind blanking white with the twisting in his abdomen. He pressed his cheek again the edge of his tub, resisting the urge to vomit with what little strength he possessed. He could not fathom exactly how Blue was up and walking while being stabbed repeatedly. Currently, he was wishing he could reach through their connection and strangle her.

"I hate you right now," he growled, using his shower curtain to pull himself back to his feet unsteadily.

Blue was there beside him as he dropped down onto his couch, letting his head lull against the back. "I know, but I'm only slightly sorry. I don't wish this on anyone, but it's nice to have someone to share my pain with."

"Bitch," Ronan muttered without malice, rolling his head slowly on his shoulders, "I need ice cream and chocolate and, shit, just everything. I want to eat everything. I will eat the world."

Smirking, Blue patted his knee comfortingly. "Tea. That's usually what I use to curb that so I don't go getting fat in a week. Speaking of which, a cup of tea sounds perfect before work." She stood, moving through her cramped kitchen where everyone in her home seemed to be at that moment, yelling at someone everyone else couldn't see or shuffling stacks tarot cards with practiced ease. When she dropped back down beside Ronan, she held a cup of steaming water and steeping leaves.

"What is that?" Ronan asked, wrinkling his smirk in mock disgust. His code of conduct wouldn't allow him to show actual interest or acceptance of something other than beer and possible partners. It smelled stupidly satisfying, his mouth watering at just the smell, sweet and ripe.

"Tea. Want to try some?" Blue offered him the cup, raising and eyebrow at him in challenge.

His nose wrinkling just that much more, he took the cup, muttering, "I guess so." The liquid slipped over his tongue, warm and fruity. He suppressed a sigh of relief as the roiling in his stomach calmed and his cravings all, but disappeared.

"Didn't I tell you it would work?" Blue asked smugly, allowing herself a prideful smirk, "Tea, an amazing substance when brewed correctly."

"Whatever, it's just leaf water," Ronan told her, but didn't return her cup until he'd taken another sip.

"Sure, just keep telling yourself that." They both sat back against the couch, watching the commotion of Blue's kitchen in comfortable silence.

**Blue** :

Blue was resisting the urge to punch her customer with every ounce of patience she possessed. She knew that Ronan's ever present fury was poisoning any good mood she had managed to preserve from her quiet sit with him, but she also knew that her own flip of the switch temper played a major role in her sudden urge to maim the boy sitting on the outside of the tiny booth. He was surrounded by his friends, grinning cockily at her as they laughed around him.

Gritting her teeth, she allowed herself one precious moment to imagine the look of surprise that would cross his face if she struck him. "Could I get your drink orders and your order if you are ready so I can get that in and out to you?" she asked more politely than she believed the table deserved. The lone girl gave her an apologetic glance, her head lowered as if she was looking to be saved. Blue held little sympathy for her, though, because she was not making a sound to curb their unwelcome remarks.

"I'd like to get in and out of you, darling," the boy told her, waggling his eyebrows.

"Sir, I don't think you understand just how inappropriate you are being. I would greatly appreciate it if you would resist from using any pet names to refer to me, and simply stop talking to me the way you have been," Blue said, her smile becoming an easier kind of acting. She allowed herself to be pushed to the back of her mind, her body handed over to Gansey.

The group jerked their eyes up to him, silence falling over them. The girl stared at him in awe as the boy beside her spluttered, "W-w-well, I don't think **you** understand just how fuckable you look in that uniform. I can say what I want."

Gansey blinked at him for one long silent moment until he was sure the boy was sufficiently uncomfortable. "I have been incredibly civil and respectful to you, and you have repaid me with dirty comments and sexual harassment. Now, let me give you a warning before all of my civility dissolves. If you make one more comment, I will go find my manager and allow him to deal with you."

"Don't be like that. We just want to have a little fun," the boy said, smile turning cocky again, a hand slipping beneath the skirt of Blue's uniform to cup her backside.

Blue struck out before Gansey could restrain her. Her palm cracked across the boy's cheek, the contact sounding over the music. Turning on a heel, she stormed away.

"Go find your manager. Tell him what happened before that group does," Gansey told her as he hurried beside her. He glanced over his shoulder, ignoring the shouts they were throwing at Blue.

Pausing, Blue cut her eyes to him. "Thank you… for trying to help the situation, even though it really didn't."

A hand, small and delicate, clamped down on her shoulder. She whirled around, ready to slap someone else only to find the girl from the table smiling at her. "Thank you so much for hitting him. I've been trying to pluck up the courage to do that for hours now."

Beside her, Gansey let out a soft laugh.

**Gansey** :

' _Dick, what the hell am I looking at_?' Helen yelled.

Gansey jerked away from his cell so violently that it went clattering to the top of his desk. Rubbing at his neck and shoulder where he'd been cradling it, he pressed it back to his ear. "Helen, you're going to have to be a little more specific. I can't actually see what you're looking at. And please don't yell. I like my hearing undamaged."

He could almost hear her rolling her eyes over the static filled line. ' _Don't play dumb with me. This airline ticket to_ **Ireland** _on your credit card._ '

Gansey narrowed his eyes in something close to irritation. "Why are you looking at my credit statement?"

' _I thought I'd used the wrong card. I was going to pay you back. Back to the real subject here. You realize you scheduled this over Dad's birthday, correct? You said you'd come home for it next week_.'

"I said I'd try," he corrected, glancing over to the carryon he had open on his bed. He'd had to wash all of his laundry when he'd gotten back, and now was having to repack it. "And at the present moment, I have a pressing matter to attend to in Ireland. I can't put it off."

' _Does this have to do with your thesis? If so, that's acceptable, but if it has anything to do with that Welsh king or those sensates you're always on about, it most certainly is not. Birthdays are non-skip-able events. We agreed on this when you moved to England_.'

He considered lying, but thought better of it. Instead, he said, "Tell Dad I said that I'm sorry I'll be missing his birthday. I'll call him."

' _Dick_ -' Her voice cut out as Gansey pressed the end button.

Sighing loudly, Gansey ran his hands down his face, staring up at the ceiling. He jumped as Noah's voice drifted over him.

"So, you're going to go meet Ronan? Isn't that, like, against the rules or something?" he asked, sitting on the edge of Gansey's bed, glancing surreptitiously into his bag.

"Against the rules of what?"

"Of being a sensate. That's what we are, right? I've seen your thesis, and I've heard Blue's family talking about it when she wasn't paying attention," Noah explained, looking around the room curiously, "Does your sister know that your thesis more or less is about sensates?"

Gansey cocked his head at him, ignoring his question. "Why would it be against the rules?" he asked instead.

Noah frowned down at his feet, kicking his legs. "Well, I mean, we're already all connected. Wouldn't it be breaking the rules to also be physically in the same place?"

"I don't know. We'll find out, I guess."

"Would it stop you even if it was against the rules?"

"No."

Noah grinned. "Tell him to take you to one of his fights. I want to watch it."

**Noah** :

"This is a really fucking bad idea, Noah." Ronan walked beside him, long strides closing the distance to the building without effort. "You should turn back now before anything goes wrong. There's still time. Really, just do it. You roommate can do with on his own since he's so determined to. It was his idea."

Noah sighed, tugging at the cuffs of the soft, black leather gloves that he'd scrounged up on Ronan's insistence. Barry had refused the set of rubber gloves he'd unearthed from beneath the bathroom sink, as if his fingerprints wouldn't be left the same as Noah's. He jogged ahead of them between the leaning buildings, searching for the window he'd marked on the blueprints. "I know, but I can't just leave him alone, and he's not going to listen to me anyway."

"Well, why the fuck not?" Ronan snapped, rolling his eyes as Barry jumped at a window more than a few feet above him.

Noah cut Ronan a tired gaze. "Would you just leave your friend?" Ronan didn't respond because they both knew the answer.

With a snarl and sigh of his own, Ronan pushed Barry out of the way, jumping and pulling himself onto the small ledge with practiced ease. Experimentally, ignoring Barry's annoyed cry, he tested the window. It was locked, as he would have expected. Pulling off Noah's baggy black sweater, he wrapped it around his fist and smashed through the window. Barry squeaked below him, but once the clatter of glass had faded, all was silent.

"Don't cut yourself. Leaving blood when you could have avoided it is a stupid way to get caught," Ronan instructed him, watching Noah carefully climb through the window. He landed on plush carpet in a freezing bedroom. The bed sheets were rumpled, clothes spread across the floor, but it had the smell of not having been lived in for a few weeks.

Noah turned back to the window, watching as Barry clambered through it, leaving a smear of blood on the windowsill. Without considering what he was doing, he grabbed a shirt from the floor, mopped up his hand and the windowsill untidily, and threw it back to the floor. Beside Noah, Blue winced and rolled her eyes. "You're going to need bleach for that later," she told him.

"What are we looking for? What room is it supposed to be in?" Noah asked quietly, opening the door a crack to peek into the hall.

"We're looking for a map. It's supposed to be nearly a century old, so handle any you find very carefully. It's supposed to be in a study. The pretentious bastard probably has it hung up on a wall like a trophy," Barry told him without moderating his voice, jerking the door out of Noah's careful fingers and striding through it, leaving a smear of blood on the handle. The door slammed against the bedroom wall. "There's nobody home. The guy went to some auction in Whales. He's not due back for another week."

Blue stared after him as he disappeared into the hall. "Is your friend stupid?" she asked Noah, "The guy has to have neighbors he's friendly with. If they hear him in here, they're going to start to get suspicious."

"I wonder that myself sometimes." Following after him, Noah crept more cautiously from the room, turning down the hall in the opposite direction Barry had gone. There was only one other door down his end of the hallway.

Blue stopped him in front of it, his boot inches from the door. "Hold on, I think there's something here." Getting down on her knees, she peered at a faint green line she could see darting from frame to frame.

"I can take care of that," Adam said, taking Blue's place, "I may be a mechanic, but your sister taught me a few things about technology." He was careful to keep from disrupting the laser, feeling along the outside of the frame until his fingers caught on a small hatch. Accepting the knife Noah offered him, he pried it open, quickly cutting the wires to the small device within. The laser flickered out. "If that was the only security system he had installed, I'd be really surprised. Be careful."

Pushing the door open, Noah stepped into a room that was less of a study and more of a library. Bookshelves filled to the brim with books touched the high ceilings, a rolling ladder resting on railings before them. "Oh wow," they all said together, staring around at the grand room. Blue ran her fingers over the spines of the old books. Adam pressed his fingers to the deeply stained wood of a desk. Ronan stood in front of a statue of an angel pulling itself from a block of marble. Noah stared up at the painting decorating the domed ceiling.

Gansey stared up at a framed map. "This, I've been looking for this for years," he whispered, awe shadowing his voice, "A map of the ley lines."

Noah whirled around as the unmistakable cocking of a handgun broke the stillness of the room. Barry's face was blank, eyes unfeeling as he pointed the handgun at Noah, muzzle close enough to brush the skin of Noah's forehead. "B-Barry?" he whispered, staring at the gun in nothing short of terror. Where had he gotten the gun? Why was he pointing it at him? Why did he have a gun in the first place?

Shrugging, Barry smiled apologetically. "Sorry about this Noah, but I can't have any witnesses, you might rat me out, and I'm not looking to split the payout."

"I-I d-don't want any money," Noah stammered, unable to move his eyes from the trigger that Barry had lazily wrapped his index finger around.

"'Course you're not, you don't need it," Barry muttered bitterly, glaring at Noah, "But I'd rather not allow that chance that you might change your mind later. Anyway, who's going to notice a map missing when there's a body to focus on instead?"

"Run!" Noah heard not only Blue scream, but Adam and Ronan as well. By the time his mind had caught up to everything that was going on –Barry was going to shoot him, he was really going to do it- Gansey's fist was flying towards the gun.

Barry let out a strangled yelp as pain lanced up Noah's arm and the gun went skidding across the floor. Sirens blared outside the building, strong and pulsing.

"Run!" the four screamed at him again, and he did. He bolted for the bedroom as the front door crashed open, shimmying his way down to the street below and sprinting down a side alley. He crouched beside a wet box with a tiny, mewling kitten in it, cradling his hand against his chest.

"Noah, what's going on? Why aren't you here?" Natalie yelled over the sirens, hands clamped over her ears as she crouched in front of him, watching as he dipped a hand into the box and slipped the kitten into his sweater against his chest.

He glanced up at her, the pain of his throbbing hand finally catching up to him and bringing tears to his bright eyes. "Can you come get me? I think my thumb is broken."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One: There's a time gap here somewhere. It's probably been about a week and a half since Noah's little accident, but I can't say for certain. Just know that there's been a time skip. Eventually, I will have a concrete amount of time jumping for y'all, but at the moment, my brain is a little fried and it'll take it some time to completely reboot, so please bear with me.
> 
> Two: I was gone for a while, but I'm back now and shouldn't be going anywhere for a while, hopefully.

**Ronan** :

"Babe, really, this is just fucking ridiculous," Kavinsky snarled at Ronan over Prokopenko and through the passenger window of the Mitsubishi, lips pulled back over his teeth and white sunglasses pushed up into his hair. His glare was harsh, his voice savage.

Ronan glanced over at him, raising an eyebrow in that way he knew Kavinsky simultaneously resented and couldn't resist. "I don't think it is." Turning his eyes, his mental clock clicked down the seconds until the light turned. "Are you going to race or just stare at me all night?" He slammed his foot down on the accelerator, rubber screaming against asphalt as he shot forward.

Kavinsky spat a curse, racing after him, but he was already too late. The Mitsubishi fell behind him length after length until he could no longer see its frowning mouth. He slowed, turning down the scream of his music, allowing it to settle into a low moan.

"How from the airport are you?" Gansey asked loudly, staring out the window at the rolling green hills, the castle looming in the distance on the edge of the ocean, dark and sinister. Clouds, thick and black, roiled above them, threatening a storm. "I'm not looking to walk through the city while it is pouring."

Ronan reached over, turning his music down enough to communicate with his company without having to shout. "Not far. Why the hell are you coming to Dublin, of all places, again?"

"Well, I was in England and you were in Dublin, and that's not entirely too terribly far apart. I thought it would be a good idea to physically meet one of the people I am metaphysically connected to."

"I would have liked a little more warning than a week and a half."

"If I gave you that long, I wouldn't have had an excuse not to go home," Gansey explained with a shrug of his shoulders, "On top of that, being here will allow me to keep you from getting into too much trouble."

A snort sounded in their ears, obviously Blue, that had a smile quirking up the corners of Gansey's mouth and turning Ronan's down in a scowl. "I can keep myself out of trouble perfectly fine." This time, the snort resolved in derisive laughter. "Maggot, if you don't shut up, I will pull this car over and we can go right on the side of the road."

"How about you just keep driving to the airport instead," Gansey suggested before Blue had time to retort because he knew full well that Ronan would stop the car and he also knew that Blue would not back down from any challenge she was presented with. "The two of you, honestly."

"This is what you've gotten yourself into."

"I didn't ask for this," Gansey pointed out without malice, though he wondered in a quiet corner of his mind if that was actually a true statement. It tasted of a lie.

Ronan shrugged. "I didn't ask to be connected to a mechanic, an adventurer, a midget and a ghost. You've just got to suck it up, buttercup."

"I have never been called 'buttercup' in my life. I'm not entirely sure that I enjoy the nickname."

"I could call you 'old man'."

"I'd rather be called 'buttercup', I think."

Ronan nodded. "'Old man' it is."

**Gansey** :

The sharp, ugly scent of antiseptic and the shocking pain of a broken thumb assaulted Gansey as he slowly unpacked his carry-on, putting his things in the three drawers Ronan had graciously vacated for him in his dresser at the Barns. He'd also vacated his room, choosing to take residence in his younger brother's old room while Gansey used his. He clutched at his wrist, face screwing up with the pain pulsing up his arm.

"Sorry," Noah murmured through clenched teeth, "I haven't taken the meds the doctor gave me in a while. They make me sleepy." He moved towards the bathroom, returning with two pills in his hand and a glass of water.

Gansey shook his head, dropping down onto the edge of the mattress. "Don't say sorry, I'm the one who broke your thumb in the first place, or got it broken."

Noah popped the pills into his mouth, one at a time with a sip of water between each. "You also saved my life. Barry would have killed me if you hadn't stopped him."

"But he also broke your thumb," Ronan said as he pushed into the room, two mugs of hot chocolate clutched in his hands and sporting a pair of dry pajama pants. He set one on the dresser, leaning against the wall to survey Gansey and the sopping clothing he was still wearing. "You're going to get sick if you stay in those wet clothes, geezer."

Gansey leveled an unamused gaze at him, rubbing at the ache in his hand even as the pain killers slowly began to take effect on him and Noah. "I'll take a shower as soon as my thumb doesn't feel like its hanging onto my hand by a few threads of muscle."

Rolling his eyes, Ronan said, "You're being a drama queen."

"I think that's your job," Noah interjected, raising an eyebrow at him, "Adam should really see you like this. I'm sure he would enjoy it."

"Well, he's not here right now, is he?"

"He could be."

"There are too many people in this room as it is. We don't need another two. We all know that if we bring Adam here, then Blue's going to wonder why she's not here, and then show up, and this room is just not big enough for five people all in each other's heads," Gansey said as he gathered up his change of clothes and mug, headed for the bathroom.

Ronan laughed darkly, sipping at his mug. "Oh, there can be plenty of room if you have an imagination."

"Oh, I have plenty imagination, Ronan Lynch, but I do not have a capacity for claustrophobia."

Noah grinned, taking Gansey's place on the edge of the bed. "Now you are being a drama queen."

"Drama llama."

"Drama king."

"Now you're just being uncreative."

Gansey came back from the bathroom, blinking as them. "If I weren't so tired, I would argue this point with you two, but I am exhausted and would enjoy some time to take a shower and then go to bed before midnight." Grabbing his toiletries bag, he turned on a heel, marching back into the bathroom.

"Night, Gansey," Noah called, a goofy grin splitting his face as the pain killers finally kicked in.

"Good night, you two," Gansey called good-naturedly before closing the door on the pair.

**Noah** :

"So, you're still suspended from Nino's?" Noah asked, spinning on the stool behind the counter, watching her mark the incoming books with prices while flipping through a book she had pinned open with her elbow. Her eyes darted back and forth across the page, only glancing to the book she was marking before and after she'd put a price on it.

"Yeah, I can't come back for another month. Something about letting the costumer cool down and also to see if he ever comes back," she said, eyes stopping on a sentence towards the bottom of her page. Her mouth popped open. Blinking for a long moment, she snapped the book shut and shoved it off the edge of the counter, not even flinching as it slammed to the floor. "Yep, I'm done with that for a while. It can stay there until I decide I can deal with it again."

Noah, on the other hand, did wince. He stood, leaning over the edge of the counter to stare at the book, its pages sadly spread in wait. "I don't think that book deserved that."

"I am suffering from second hand embarrassment for my favorite character at the moment. That book deserved it," Blue replied, hefting the large stack of books into her arms and marching towards the shelves. They were alone in the small, simple store, and so, she stripped out of her thin cardigan, throwing it to Noah. Pulling a stool towards her, she started sliding the books into their rightful places. "How's your thumb?" she asked, a twinge of pain sparking up her arm.

Shrugging, Noah dropped to the floor beside the stack, staring up at her as she worked. "Healing."

"Does it hurt?"

"All the time, and itches too. Natalie says that's because it's healing, that it's a good sign, but it's still uncomfortable. She yells at me a lot because I'm always sticking a pen down my cast to scratch it."

Blue made a face, bending and accepting the next couple of books he offered her. "Isn't that unsanitary?"

Noah laughed. "When you have to wear a cast twenty-four seven and you're itching like crazy, then come to me and tell me you wouldn't stick a pen down your cast because it's unsanitary."

Rolling her eyes with a laugh, she turned back to the shelf. "Shouldn't you be sleeping for school or something? Or do you not sleep like Ronan and Gansey don't sleep? Two insomniacs are quite enough in this relationship we all have together."

"No, I sleep. I like to sleep a lot, but Natalie is kind of a night owl, and right now, she's watching a horror film in the common area really loudly," he explained, shuddering.

This time, Blue heard the blood curdling scream as it rose from the television. She shuddered right alongside him. "Well, tell her pause it so you can sleep. I don't want to be exhau-" She snapped her teeth together sharply as the doorbell at the front of the store rang, signaling a costumer.

She popped her head around the side, greeting them with her best people-pleasing smile. She was turning back to him when he blinked and was back in his room, his back pressed against the wall behind him. Sighing, he stood and wandered into the common area to see what his sister was really watching.

**Blue** :

"Blue," Maura called from the kitchen, "You've got mail from your school."

Kicking off her shoes by the door, just adding to the mountain that was already growing there, she shuffled into the kitchen, following the sweet smell of pie and the buttery scent of pasta. "Probably just more fundraiser information or a bake sale or something for the football team, maybe the swim team."

"Well, come sit down. We just finished dinner." She indicated the small table with six places set out. Calla, Persephone, and Mr. Gray occupied three out of six of those places, lively banter surrounding them.

Persephone stood, handing Blue the letter while she rescued the pie and brought it to the table. "You should open that now before you have food on your plate. That way you don't send it flying," she instructed helpfully.

"Actually, you should just stay standing. Don't sit at the table. I don't want to clean up broken plates," Calla corrected, folding her hands together, resting her chin on them. "Go on, open it up."

Frowning, Blue tore the envelope open carefully, tugging out the letter. A scream rose in her throat, just barely cut off by the hand that she pressed to her mouth. She was all but vibrating with excitement, eyes flickering from her mother to the letter and back again. "Adam, I need to talk to Adam right now!" she shouted, sprinting from the room before skidding back into it, "I don't know his number! How do I contact someone in my cluster when I want to?"

"Well, you could simply think of them," Persephone suggested in her quiet voice, "Or you could send them a signal."

"I don't have time to learn how to do that! I need to-"

Adam raised an eyebrow at her from where he leaned on the counter, a smile tugging up the corners of her mouth. "You needed to ta-" He didn't get to finish his sentence as she threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around him. "Oh, alright," he laughed stiffly, wrapping an arm around her and using the other to keep himself standing.

"I got it! They approved me to study abroad! I leave after Spring Break! I'm going to England!" she shouted, her arms tightening around him. Pulling back, she smiled widely at him.

"I'm going to Germany," he told her, smile mirroring hers, "After Spring Break."

Maura wrapped her arms around both Adam and Blue. "Now that we've gotten that all out, how about we eat dinner? Adam, would you like to join us?"

Adam was at a simple loss for words so Blue answered for him. "He said yes."

**Adam** :

Adam sat on the edge of his bed, cradling his arm against his chest, tears streaking tracks across his face. Resisting the urge to sniffle like he was ten again, he let a sob fall from his lips. He rubbed the back of his wrist beneath his nose, shoulders hitching with a harder sob. He could already feel the bruise blooming across his cheekbone and his ribs, the ache in his shoulder where it had almost been dislocated.

Always, always with his father. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how far he ran, no matter how long he stayed away, his father always came at him, always found ways to hurt him. He supposed that hurting him was better than his father hurting his mother, she surely would never survive such an onslaught. Or maybe she already had, before he was born, before he'd even been thought of.

God, his family was a fucking mess.

The bed beside him dipped down under a newcomer's weight, heat sliding off of them in waves. Adam stiffened, the sob on his tongue lodging in his throat, quickly wiping at the tears still clinging to his cheeks and lashes.

"Is there any particular reason I feel like I've been run over by a truck?" Ronan's derisive voice asked as he shifted on Adam's bed, turning to him, "Hey man, I was just joking. There's no need to get emotional over a joke."

Adam turned swollen, bloodshot eyes in a glare at him. He knew what he must look like, disheveled, dried blood marking its path from his lip down his chin, cheek purpling with a bruise. The way Ronan's eyebrows pulled together and the tightening of the skin around his eyes only solidified the image in his head.

Not trusting his voice not to break, he simply broke their eye contact, looking over to where he'd begun packing, the lid of his shabby suitcase propped open against the wall, all of his belonging that weren't essential already packed neatly inside. They didn't even take up a third of the space, and he knew that his clothes wouldn't fill much more.

"Why didn't you-" Ronan started, murmuring to himself, stopping as he leaned closer to Adam, "Who did this to you?"

Swallowing and clearing his throat, willing his voice to be even and steady, he muttered, "No one. It's nothing."

"It's obviously not nothing if you look like this. I know what cracked ribs feel like, Adam, and yours are a hairs width away from breaking." Ronan stood, the anger pulsing through him and overflowing into Adam sending him to his feet and across the room as he started up a sharp pace. "Seriously, tell me who it was. I'm going to break their fucking nose. Why didn't you call for help? I could have helped you."

"It wasn't anyone. I fell down the stairs." It was a ridiculous lie, he knew, but he didn't want to try to explain this to Ronan of all people. Ronan who could protect himself, who fought for pleasure. Ronan who had never known what it felt like to be helpless.

A snarl pulled Ronan's lips away from his teeth. "Don't fucking lie to me, Parrish."

Ronan's anger, potent and infection, set Adam's blood to boil. "What are you going to do, Ronan? You're on the other side of the Atlantic! You can't do anything, not without using my body as a medium! You can't protect me!"

"You don't want anyone to protect you, you prideful wretch!" Ronan snarled back, eyes flashing, "We can tell, you know, Blue and Gansey and Noah and me, we can all feel when you block us out like you did earlier! I know you did it because you don't want us knowing that even you can be helpless sometimes. News flash, we're all helpless at some point, and some of us didn't have this stupid fucking connection for support! Some of us had to drag ourselves through it on our own, and you know what? It sucks, and I wish I'd had this when I was helpless! So, don't ignore us, don't block us out!" His chest was heaving, his cheeks flushed pink. He clutched his hands at his sides, long fingers curling into tight fists. "What's the point of this thing being a thing if you don't let us in?"

"My father," Adam confessed abruptly, the anger dissipating from his body as suddenly as it had overtaken him, tears stinging his eyes once more.

Ronan blinked in confusion. "What?"

Swallowing, Adam whispered, "My father was the one who did this to me. Earlier today, when I told my mother that I would be studying abroad, and so, I wouldn't be able to send them money." The first tear fell, splattering against the fist he pressed down into his knee. "He's the one who made me lose the hearing in my left ear. It's always him. I-I can't d-do anything about i-it." He stumbled through his last sentence, his shoulders hitching as he dissolved back into tears.

He hadn't wanted Ronan to see him like this, small and vulnerable and broken. Ronan had always been so strong and sure of himself, even when he was self-conscious of the scars that decorated his body. He didn't want Ronan to see him like this, but he couldn't seem to pull himself together.

Ronan swore under his breath, dropping back down beside Adam. He wrapped him in his arms, a little awkwardly at first, but with more confidence as he pulled Adam into his chest. Flipping one leg behind Adam's back and pressing the other into Adam's knees, engulfing Adam in his warmth as his shoulders shook harder with each breath he took.

They remained silent save for Adam's quiet sobs, and he had to silently thank Ronan for that little peace.


	6. Chapter 6

**Blue** :

Blue sighed miserably, leaning her head against her hand. She stared at the television screen, tuning out whatever it was blaring while simultaneously trying to ignore the eerie silence of the house. Everyone had disappeared in a matter of moments when she'd kicked off her shoes at the front door, leaving her with leftover pizza and a never empty, empty house. She watched disinterestedly as the two people on screen were interrupted from where they were leaning towards each other.

Loneliness stabbed her through the middle.

"What are you watching?"

Blue glanced down into her lap, finding Gansey staring up at her, a book resting open on his chest. His head rested on her thighs, his soft hair tickling the exposed skin of her legs. She turned her eyes back to the screen. "I'm not entirely sure. Something with British accents."

"That narrows it down." They remained like that, Gansey's warmth permeating Blue's skin, Blue's hand itching to run through his hair. "Has this 'getting interrupted' thing been happening the whole episode?"

"It's pretty much been the theme of the episode." Without her permission, her eyes drifted back down, snagging on his lips, and she started to lean down towards him.

He hummed, turning his eyes back to her, stilling her in her path. He hadn't noticed that she'd moved, or if he did, he didn't comment on it. "That must be aggravating and a little embarrassing."

"I imagine it'd be worse if they'd actually been caught. Like, if my family walked in now, I wouldn't be half as mortified as if they walked in and I was actually kissing you. They can imagine all they want, but thoughts and actions are very different from each other."

A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. "Is that something you'd consider? Kissing me, I mean?"

Fighting down the heat that bloomed in her cheeks, Blue scowled down at him. "Why would you think I would want to kiss you?"

Gansey shrugged as best he could lying down. "No reason." He turned his eyes back to the television, gnawing gently on his bottom lip.

She couldn't tear her eyes from his mouth. She'd never been kissed before, not because no one had been interested, but because she had never been. She'd never found the logic in spending time imagining what it would be like to be in a relationship, to have lips pressed to hers, or wondering what it would be like. She'd always been more focused on other things, grander things, mystical things, unexplainable things. Her head dipped lower.

She wondered if this was what longing felt like.

Turning his eyes back to her, Gansey pushed himself up to meet her halfway.

 **Gansey** :

Blue's lips were warm and pliable beneath his, forming to his mouth and moving with his. She pressed her hand to his chest, and his heart beat a staccato against her palm. He'd kissed girls before, but this was-

"Dick, what are you doing?"

A sharp bark of laugher had Gansey breaking his kiss with Blue one second, and landing back in Ronan's brother's bedroom in the next, his hand still raised as if cupping the back of her neck, his lips still tingling. He dropped back to the bed, his arm falling over his eyes. "I was sleeping," he mumbled.

"It looked like you were making out with someone, or more rightly, the air," Helen's voice commented simply from the doorway, interest and disinterest mixing in her tone. "Must of have been a good dream. If it was more than just a _good dream_ , please take care of any embarrassing happenings before joining us."

Gansey bolted upright, the book falling from his chest, snapping shut with a shout as it dropped to his legs. "That's disgusting. Why would you say that to your sibling?" he snapped, ignoring the warm, loose knot that had been forming in his abdomen as he'd kissed Blue. Was this what arousal felt like? He'd have to ask Ronan later, or maybe Adam would be better. "Why are you here, Helen? I'm rather concerned on how you got this address."

He threw back the covers, following after where she'd disappeared down the hall. He found her in the living room, a cup of tea that he highly suspected had been spiked with the Jamison that sat beside the teapot sitting in front of her. Ronan stood with his back to the fireplace, an amused smirk playing at the corners of his lips.

Helen shrugged unashamedly. "We tracked your cell. Dad wasn't angry, but Mom is pretty pissed because you didn't come home for his birthday. She couldn't fly out here herself –she had something to do for her campaign- so she sent me to yell at you."

Gansey rolled his eyes, taking a seat across from her. He glanced back at Ronan who had actually put a shirt on for the first time since Gansey had gotten there. Sweat dropped from his chin. "I already called, apologized, and tried to explain why I couldn't come back."

"Oh yes, you look incredibly busy, taking catnaps and dreaming of making out."

A sarcastic retort sat on the tip of his tongue, ready to slip past his teeth as his lips parted, but it was not his words that came from his mouth, but Adam's. "I made a breakthrough on my thesis. Ronan has been helping me."

Ronan's eyebrows shot toward his hairline. He'd been doing no such thing, and the three of them knew it. The most he'd done was hinder Gansey's attempt to recreate the map they'd found when Noah and Barry had broken into the man's house. Adam had been more help, hundreds of miles away, looking into its owner.

"Oh?" Helen asked, her interest piqued, "And what did you find this time?"

Again, Adam took the reins from Gansey. "A map that depicts the ley lines more precisely."

"I'd like to hear more about this map. I have to have something to take back to Mom to placate her," Helen said, picking up her cup, "But before I leave, I'd like to explore Dublin a bit. I hear there's an underground boxing ring here."

Ronan smirked, staring at Gansey who pointedly ignored him.

Adam leaned back next to him with a sigh. "Gansey, you have the luxury of telling your family the truth, maybe not the whole truth, but the truth. Don't squabble that." The sharp pain of cracked ribs stabbed through Gansey's ribcage, and the three of them flinched.

Helen raised an eyebrow at the two her eyes could perceive.

 **Adam** :

Adam groaned, staring down into his packed suitcase and its meager contents. He glanced to where Noah sat between Natalie and Blue on his bed, leaning back against the wall. "Am I going to need more than this in Germany? Does it get really cold in Berlin?" he asked, looking between the siblings and trying his best to focus through the scratch of Blue's pen against paper. She'd been doing a lot of drawing lately, and as far as he could tell, it hadn't been something she'd done a lot before meeting them.

The siblings pursed their lips to the same side of their mouths, tilting their heads to the exact same angle. It was kind of eerie, and made him a little more uneasy than he wanted to admit. "Well, it gets cold in the winter, but you can stock up here before then if you need to. Otherwise, you should be good," Noah said, "Oh, but you should probably bring an umbrella, if you want one."

Natalie nodded. "It gets kind of rainy in the summer, so I suggest it. Have they told you where you're going to stay? In the dorms or if you have to find an apartment? Or are you staying with a family?"

Rubbing the sweat from his forehead, Adam mumbled, "Um, I believe the letter said I'd be living in the dorms with some students who live in Germany, not with other exchange students."

"And that's for a year?" Blue asked, looking up from her drawing, "Like me?"

"Yes. I won't be coming back until this time next year."

"We should meet up then. I'll take a day trip to Germany, or you can take a day trip here, once we get to know the country a little bit, show each other around." She grinned. "What about Christmas? Will you be coming back?"

Adam frowned, imagining what a disaster that would be. His father would probably burn the tree to the ground if Adam returned. He shook his head. "No, I… I won't have anything to return for. I'll just spend Christmas alone this year."

The trio against his wall frowned, scowling at the mere thought. "No," they all said in unison, "You can come spend Christmas with us."

Adam blinked. Noah and Blue looked at each other, laughing.

"How about you take him for Thanksgiving and I'll take him for Christmas?" Blue suggested. Noah nodded in agreement, leaving Adam to stare as they made plans between themselves. These people hadn't even met him in the flesh, and already they were offering to spend their family holidays with them. He couldn't understand it.

Noah was mid laugh when his eyes popped wide, and he whispered, "Oh!" before flickering out. The remaining three could only stare at each other in shock.

 **Noah** :

"Noah!" Natalie screeched, shaking him from his daze. He head smacked sickeningly against the wall, sending a blanket of stars over his vision. "Adam, I don't know what to do! He's not waking up! Should I call an ambulance? I think I just gave him a concussion! Oh god, I think I see blood!"

Noah groaned loudly, blinking the stars from his eyes. He pushed her hands away, rubbing the back of his head. "I think you caved in my skull."

"I'm so sorry! But you disappeared and you passed out, and I couldn't wake you up, and I'm so sorry! Are you alright?"

Noah sighed, rubbing at his forehead. "I think I'll be better if you stop screaming in my ear."

Clamping her lips shut, her screeching disappearing into a whimper at the back of her throat, Natalie glanced over her shoulder. "He's awake and talking, but I can't find any reason for why- Wait, what? You said what? You can't feel him? Like, there's just an empty space where he used to be, or something?" Whipping her head back around to Noah, she shook him again. "Get it together, Noah! You need to tell me, can you feel the others in your cluster?"

"What are you talking about?" he groaned. His head was spinning. He needed to lie down, but he couldn't muster up the energy to push his sister's hands away. "Why wouldn't I be able to feel them? They're always here." Even as the words left his mouth, his world slowed to a halt, and he inherently felt lonely. He hadn't been lonely since the connection with his cluster had opened. He couldn't feel any of them. A chill raced down his spine. "I- No, they're not there. I can't feel them at all," he whispered, terrified.

Natalie pressed her lips together, staring down at him. Her eyes flicked up, focusing on someone behind him. "Yes, Sarah, please, please, please. Please get the others and start trying to figure out what's happening. I'm going to remain here and help Noah and Adam. If you guys need anything, just pop in, but please, help us."

Even as she spoke, Noah could feel his connections opening back up again. First it was Gansey. He was frantic, the connection sparking and spiky. Then Ronan, tapping frantically on the metaphorical door into his mind. Adam came next, appearing beside Natalie with a sigh of relief, color flooding back to his face. Blue was the last. She threw herself into his arms, her face white with fear, yelling, "Don't ever do that to us again!"

As she pulled back, he asked, "Do you think your mom would know what happened?"

She bit her lip, as if worried she'd disappoint him. "I don't know. I'll ask when she gets home. I don't know where they went, and none of them will let me in."

Noah nodded, glimpsing Gansey and Ronan standing out of Natalie's way, watching him worriedly. "It's alright. I… I don't think anything else will happen tonight."

 **Ronan** :

Ronan grumbled in the back of his throat, dropping down on the edge of the Fox Way bathtub beside Blue. "Why are you sitting facing into your shower? I'm sure at least one of the 300 plus women that live here needs to take a piss. It's rude to hog the bathroom and not be doing anything in it."

Turning only her eyes to him, she replied curtly, "I'm trying to figure out what happened with Noah today, and soaking my feet helps me think." She returned her attention to the sketch book in her lap, biting down on her thumb nail.

Glancing over his shoulder, he found the tub behind him filled with ankle deep, soapy water. He kicked off his shoes and socks, turning to join her. "You could just take a bath like normal people." He hissed as he dipped his feet into the water. They shouted angrily at him. "Does boiling your fucking feet off fit in to helping yourself think?"

"No, I just turned the tap on too hot when I ran the water. Don't be such a baby anyway, you'll get used to it." The tub squeaked as she curled her toes against its surface.

Pursing his lips in distaste, holding back a nasty remark, he self-consciously ran his fingers along his scars. It hadn't taken him long to get comfortable with Gansey, so he usually traversed his home without a shirt on. Even with the others, he was relatively comfortable. They didn't mention his scars, they didn't look at them, they hardly even noticed them, or if they did, they didn't make a big show of it. This was Blue though, an opinionated girl with keen eyes and a sharp tongue and who, before his operation, he'd been the same sex as. His scars in her presence felt as if they would mean something completely different than they did with the others.

He crossed his arms over them, leaning his head back to look at the ceiling.

"I like you're scars, you know," she said simply without looking up from her sketch.

Silently, he cursed this mental bond thing, whatever made them sensates, for alerting her to his unease. He wanted to punch a wall. It had been a year and a half! He should have been absolutely comfortable in his own skin, but he wasn't, and he didn't know why. Maybe it was the way Declan had exploded when he'd come back a man. Maybe it was the way his old 'friends' had gawked at him. Maybe it was simply that even though he was inherently male now, in body, mind and soul, it wasn't so easy to break the habits that had been formed from being raised as a girl for nearly two decades.

"I think they symbolize a kind of bravery that I don't have, probably never will have. To some point, I kind of admire you for that."

Wanting, needing, to get away from this trail of discussion before that tiny sliver of femininity that had survived and prospered over the years popped out her head to say hello, he asked, "What are you drawing?"

Without a word, Blue raised the spread pages of her sketch book up to him. The pages were yellow and thick, covered from corner to corner in ink drawings. The left page showcased gigantic horses with razor teeth and a distinctly fish like quality to them, and a pair riding one of them across a cliff on the very bottom.

On the right, the boys had been sketched in all of their glory and splendor. At the top of the page, Noah, smudgy and hunched, but smiling, claimed the left of the page. Beside him, Gansey grinned with his nice jaw and nice shoulders and nice hair, clutching the leather journal Ronan had only seen him set down once in his stay. To his right, Adam, elegant and strangely beautiful with downcast eyes. Ronan came next, and he started at the sharp, strong angles of his face, the challenging tilt of his lips, the scars across his shirtless chest. Was this how he looked to people, or only Blue?

She'd drawn one more figure with their group, but it wasn't her. Ronan narrowed his eyes, staring at his old face that still looked an awful lot like he did now. She was shirtless as her counterpart had been, showcasing part of what his surgery had removed. Her smile was as savage as the man's who'd come from her. She was fuzzy around the edges though, as if she were out of focus, while he lines were sharp and clear.

Below them all, Blue had been working on a close up of Gansey's face, thin framed glasses perched on the bridge of his nose.

"Why did you draw her?" he growled, pulling back from the book, eyeing the sketches out of the corner of his eye cautiously.

Blue turned her book back to her, cocking her head at the before and after Ronan. "Because she's an important part of you. She was still you before you became you. I don't think she should be forgotten."

"That's stupid," Ronan muttered, but his arms fell away from his chest, and Blue grinned widely in response.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is beginning to bleed into each other, and with more questions asked than answered, new problems begin to present themselves.

**Ronan:**

"Shit, shit, shit," Ronan muttered, anxiety that was his and not his own at the same time seeping into his body. Knee jumping and arms crossed tightly over his chest, he stared up at the toy trains circling on a ledge above his head.

A hand pressed hard on his knee, slowing its bouncing to a stop. "You're making me more nervous than I already am," Adam muttered, not looking to him, but instead staring at the closed door of an examination room. His arm trembled with the force that pulsed through his fist down into his own knee, forcing his leg to remain still. "Just... calm down. Calm down." His voice drifted off, talking more to himself than to Ronan.

Ronan hadn't told Gansey where he'd been headed, leaving him to Helen, but now, he was regretting that decision. This was his last mandatory appointment before he psychologist allowed him to cease the appointments they'd set up after his surgery. Ultimately, it was that man's decision, but he was done with coming to this office, waiting on pins an needles, being coaxed to spill his secrets. He knew who he was, he'd known since they'd assigned Greenmantle to his case three years ago, and he was tried of trying to convince Greenmantle of that fact. Greenmantle had been a shitty shrink from the get go, and all Ronan wanted to do was fly him the one fingered salute as he walked out the door.

Adam glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "What are you waiting for?" he asked, forcing his fingers open against their knees. They shuddered, and he curled them back into fists.

"My shrink to stop being an asshole and sign my form saying I'm mentally stable after my transition and that I haven't started to regret my decision," Ronan muttered, glaring at the individual diagonal from him who fiddled with what he suspected were estrogen pills.

"They should have signed that for you months ago. Even I can tell that you've never had to wonder who you are," Adam muttered, "Let me guess, this has something to do with that brother you're always snarling about?"

Ronan ground his teeth. "You may or may not be right about that." Wrapping his hand around Adam's to still him and pressing his other to Adam's left knee, he asked, "What's got you so fucked up?"

Turning his eyes back to the hospital room door, Adam muttered, "My mom thinks she's pregnant. She didn't want to bring my dad here, so she brought me instead."

Ronan ignored the twinge of memory from his former life before his transition, turning to look at Adam. "What's so bad if she's pregnant?"

"They barely have enough money to live for just the two of them. If there's a baby involved... well, I don't know what my father will do."

The memory scratched more insistently at the door to his mind. A long walk to a back examination room. Regret. Guilt.

He shoved it away roughly. "Don't let him control your life, Parrish. If anything happens, we'll be here to help." He jumped as Piper Greenmantle slammed her husband's office door open. With the smell of antiseptic congealing in the back of his throat, he left Adam staring after him.

**Adam** :

Adam needed to talk to one of the others, or all of the others, or just any of the others. He pressed his hand to his mouth, leaning his forehead against the door to his apartment, arm crossed over his middle. He could still hear his mother's voice, frantic yet trying to be soothing, ' _Don't worry, Adam, we'll figure something out. We always do._ '

Hyperventilating, he was almost positive that he was hyperventilating. His mother was pregnant. His father was going to kill her, or make her give up the baby, or get rid of the baby on his own. If by some miracle, his father let his mother keep the baby, they would just become exactly like him, fearful and prideful and broken.

The scent of wildflowers enveloped him, and he turned to find Blue standing behind him, her brow furrowed in a look of concern. Before she could say a word, he threw his arms around her, crushing her to his chest.

With a wheeze, she asked, "Hey, what's up? Why are you stressing? You're making it hard for me to focus. I'm in class right now." Concern colored her words more than irritation.

Pulling away, he could only whisper the answer. "My mother's pregnant, and I'm worried my father will..." He trailed off, self-conscious and guilty even though nothing had transpired in that moment.

"Your father... what?" Blue asked, anger and hatred beginning to burn slowly through her veins, "If he hurt you or your mother, I swear to god I'll-"

"I'm afraid he'll make her get an abortion, or kill the baby, or beat them if he actually lets her have the baby. I don't know what to do. I want to keep my mother and my unborn sibling safe, but I leave in two days which means I would have to stay here to do that. I've waited for this chance to leave and finally get out of this godforsaken town my whole life, and I don't want to give it up, but I don't want that baby being given up or beaten or learning to be afraid because my father is the man that he is. I'm not ready to take care of a child though, that's just not something I ever planned on, and, and, and-" He was most definitely hyperventilating at that point.

Blue pulled him around, pushing him down onto the edge of his mattress. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down there. I can't understand a word you say when you don't breathe." She paused, allowing him to catch his breath. "From what I caught, you know we'll help you as best we can. I'm not going to let you give up studying abroad because your father is a giant douche whistle. So, what's the plan?"

"The... the plan?" Adam stammered, glancing up at her. His vision swam around the edges. He inhaled deeply through his nose, exhaling through his mouth as he would if he were running.

Blue's eyebrows slowly rose to kiss her hairline. "Yes," she said slowly, "The plan to keep your mother and soon-to-be sibling safe. You've got a plan, don't you?"

"What? No. I just found out about this like twenty minutes ago. I've been having a mini heart attack at too young of an age."

Rolling her eyes, she dropped down beside him on the bed, linking their fingers together and leaning her head against his shoulder as she hummed in thought. "Well, I can always ask Mom if she can stay at Fox Way. It's not like one more woman is going to make a difference in a house full of them. Plus, I'll be leaving in two days also, so there will be an open bed until I return next year."

Adam stared hopefully at the wall across from them, leaning his head against hers. "You think your mom would actually agree to that?" He frowned. "Do you think my mom will actually agree to that?"

"Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there?"

**Blue** :

Blue sat at the kitchen table with Maura, Persephone, Calla and Mr. Gray, ringing her hands in agitation. She'd just concluded what had happened with Noah, and they were glancing between each other in something close to confusion. She'd already gone through Adam's situation with them, and though they'd seemed rather reluctant -Calla had outright _refused_ until Maura and Persephone had convinced her- they'd tentatively agreed to allow Adam's mother to board with them until she had her baby and decided how to proceed from there. Now, they seemed more speechless than anything.

"I've never heard of anything like this ever happening," Persephone said quietly, "It is quite unusual."

"I thought that maybe it has something to do with the ley lines because Gansey's thesis has to do with how the ley lines are possibly linked to sensates. It got me thinking. They're energy and this thing that makes us sensates is a type of energy, right? You told me that the ley lines are why it's easier to be psychic in some places and not others. So, I just thought, maybe it works a similar way."

Maura nodded, fiddling with the cup of tea she had set in front of her. "You said that he passed out and that he wasn't present, neither in body nor the signature that you all recognize as him?"

Blue bobbed her head. "It took a minute or so after he woke until we felt him again."

Glancing over at Calla and Persephone, she murmured, "That is very strange, indeed."

Allowing them time to converse in that silent way that the three women could, she asked after a moment, "Is there anyway we can stop this from happening?" She felt a hand slip into hers, fingers entangling with her own, squeezing tightly, with a pulse of fear that echoed through her. Glancing over to Noah, she squeezed back reassuringly, watching his smile shakily at her.

Sadly, Maura shook her head. "Without more information, I don't see how. There's too much we don't know. For instance, if this is all connected to the ley lines, why the ley lines affect only Noah in this way. How he became connected to the ley lines so thoroughly. Whether it is a problem with the ley lines, with Noah himself, or the connection between them. We're sorry."

Noah's fingers went slack in hers. His face had drained of color, as if he'd had a realization or a memory had surfaced in his mind. "Could... could a near death be a reason why I'm connected to the ley lines? W-when I was younger, one of my friends and Natalie were really interested in this, ley lines and stuff. One day, my friend and I went to go scope out one of the lines, but I found out later he'd only brought me along to use in a ritual he'd found. He'd bashed me over the head. If Natalie hadn't followed us, I would be dead today."

"Y-your friend?!" Blue shouted, "That's not a friend Noah. Do you remember who-"

"N-no, I don't remember which friend." He was lying, and she knew he was lying, and the others who had started to tune in knew he was lying. "Can you ask your family?" Narrowing her eyes at him, Blue relayed his story without removing her eyes from his face.

Blinking, the three women stared wide-eyed at each other. "Yes, I believe that would," Persephone whispered.

**Noah** :

Noah was anxious. He'd been anxious all day. From the moment he'd woken, his head pounding, his connections with the others thrumming with life and vibrancy, as if trying to compensate for the few minutes he had lost the day before, he'd been anxious. He was anxious for anything and everything.

That morning, while having breakfast with a thoroughly distracted Natalie, he'd gotten a letter detailing that due to Barry's arrest, he'd be receiving a new roommate, and to treat him kindly. No name had been provided. Natalie had deemed it time to tell him that her best friend, the one of her cluster that she'd been dating on and off since she'd become a sensate, had proposed to her, but she didn't know how she was supposed to tell their parents. The conversation with Blue and her family had left him with few answers and less secrets than he'd woken with.

Yes, he was anxious, but so were the others, maybe even worse than he was. The events of the day before had left all of them jittery and worried and craving explanations that would not be had easily.

Natalie placed a hand over his, stilling the twisting and stretching of the bottom of his shirt. "Noah, it'll be alright. Just take a breath. We'll figure this out. One way or another, my cluster or your cluster, we'll figure this out."

Nodding, Noah spread himself across the couch, propping his feet in her lap. He could feel himself slipping away, the liveliness of his connections dulling, fading little by little, taking his consciousness with it. He fought futilely against the pull, fear growing behind his breast bone. He didn't want to scare the others, but he didn't know how not to when he was so scared himself. Pressing his lips tightly together, he suppressed a sob.

Gansey brushed his bangs from his forehead with fingers that trembled the slightest amount. "It's alright, Noah. I'll be here when you get back. You're going to be alright. Everything will be fine. I'll make sure the others don't notice, if that's what you want."

Noah nodded, staring up at him with pleading eyes. He wouldn't speak, not when he was so unsure if words or a wordless plea would fall from his lips. The last thing Noah saw was the concern flooding Gansey's warm eyes, and then he was gone, floating on the ebb of his energy.

**Gansey** :

Anger infected Gansey, pouring forth from him, from his every pore and orifice, making not only him intolerable, but also making everyone around him intolerable. He knew, could feel, that the anger was not his own, filling him from another source.

_Ronan_. Ronan was in a rage, looking for an opponent, flexing his fingers for a fight. He was actively seeking a willing participant, and the others were scrambling to pull him back, direct him to Gansey, and to wick away the anger from Gansey himself.

It was almost impossible for him to refrain from snapping at Helen. She ran silently away on the treadmill, barely making a noise beside the soft slip of her shoes against the tread, watching him with questioning eyebrows as he pummeled the punching bag. His knuckles, bare save for the wrappings covering them because Ronan was not in the habit of protecting his body from damage, ached and throbbed with each swing of the bag.

Slowing to a stop, Helen propped her chin in the cups of her hands. "What's got you in a tizzy?" she asked, blinking slowly as anger spiked through his system, sending the bag further back than before. "Did Ronan teach you how to box since you've been here? You've very good now, and I can still remember that time you punched in that kid's teeth, but also managed to give yourself a bloody nose as well."

"No, he hasn't," Gansey muttered under his breath, feeling the fire that spilled through his veins consume the slower simmer of embarrassment.

Shrugging, Helen stepped from the treadmill, dropping into a stretch. "Well, you certainly don't need it now. Speaking of Ronan, he promised to take me to that underground fighting ring tonight. I'm quite looking forward to that little adventure."

Stepping back from the bag, watching it swing on its chain, he resisted the urge to roll his head on his shoulders as Ronan tended to do. Forcing his fingers open, he slowly began to unwrap his hands. "He had a medical appointment today, I believe. Something about his doctor needing to do a checkup and make sure that the hormones are working as they are supposed to."

"I think they're working perfectly fine in my opinion."

"Good thing he didn't ask for your opinion."

Helen pursed her lips, standing straight. "Someone is in a foul mood."

"Ever think that you're the reason I'm in a foul mood?"

She smiled sweetly. "All the reason for me to remain here longer."

Exhaling a breath for a count of ten, Gansey wiped at the sweat dripping from the bottom of his chin. Before he could say something he would regret, Ronan skidded into the driveway, slamming into his home moments later. "Get dressed," he called from the kitchen, "We're going out tonight, and we're going to get hammered after watching some people beat each other to bloody pulps!"

Helen grinned, turning on a heel and marching from the room with a flip of her hair.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of them has a nightmare, everyone has a nightmare.

**Noah** :

Blackness surrounded Noah. Not the kind that had overpowered him earlier, when his energy had been sucked from his body and his consciousness had slipped from his grasp, but the kind of warm darkness that came with sleep. He knew he was sleeping, remembered the moment when he'd conceded to exhaustion and fallen into slumber, but it writhed, sliding around him, holding onto his limbs.

"Come on, Czerny, stop being such a baby. We've almost found it, I know it."

Noah spun around to face Barry. They stood in the middle of a clearing, surrounded by trees soaring high into the sky and blue mountains on every side, the summer sun beating down on them mercilessly. The memory of terror spiked through him, an echo of the real thing, but he ignored it with a shake of his head.

Barry poured over a map spread out in the grass, his nose nearly pressed to the wrinkled, worn paper. Glancing up, he looked around them quickly before returning to the map. A skateboard lay at his side. He'd been lugging it through the forest the entire morning, and Noah couldn't understand why he'd brought it. He could have walked to the trail head just as easily as Noah had. "I think this is the place. It looks like the place. It kind of smells like the place."

"Sure," Noah muttered, ignoring the tiny voice in his head that whispered to him to tell Barry how stupid that sounded. How could you _smell_ of a place was the right place? It was stupid and ridiculous, and he wondered not for the first time why he put up with Barry. "Where are we?"

"Well, according to this map, we're in the very center of the line, hopefully," Barry told him, folding up the map and stashing it in his hoodie pocket as he stood, staring around at the treetops with his mouth open wide. "This is the line. This is where we've been looking for for months."

Noah suppressed that little voice again. _Barry_ had been looking for the line, _Natalie_ had been looking for the line, Noah _had not_ been looking for the line. He only tagged along for something to do. There was nothing special about the place anyway. It was just a forest like all of the others. Though he had to marvel at the beauty of it. The vibrantly green leaves shivering on the breeze, the flowers waving to him from high up. He could stand there all day simply taking it all in. "Natalie is going to be so pissed that we came here without her."

"You're sisters a drag. It's better that we came on our own."

"You're just mad that she rejected you because she likes girls," Noah quipped back, feeling prickly at the insult to his sister. He was the only one allowed to insult her, just like she was the only one allowed to insult him. It was the privilege of having blood relations.

Barry ground his teeth beside him. "Whatever. No it's not. It's because your sister is stupid, and I'm not going to share my king with her."

" _Our_ king," Noah corrected, thinking of the little tidbits he'd found each time they were at the end of their lead that would extend their rope another ten feet. He may not have cared about all of it, but he wanted some credit too, if only in private.

" _My_ king," Barry growled back. "Sorry about this, Czerny, but I refuse to share him with anyone."

Before Noah could turn, pain exploded over the back of his skull. His knees buckled beneath him, cracking painfully against the hard packed dirt. "Barry, what...?" he groaned, holding the back of his head while he fought the spinning threatening to make him spill his breakfast. With black spots clouding his vision, he looked up at Barry holding his skateboard high over his head.

"Like I said, sorry about this Czerny, but he's my king and I'm not going to share him with anyone, not even you." He brought down the board again.

 **Gansey** :

"Gansey, don't go too far. Lunch is about to be ready, and we've still got to make it back before my meeting," Mrs. Gansey called to him as he tromped his way through the tall grass into the woods that grew ominous behind the house of his mother's friends.

He waved his hand over his head, showing that he'd heard, but not that he'd cared all that much. The voices that always followed him, slipping in and out of his ears without body and without context were louder than ever. They shouted, cried, called, murmured, looking for a way out.

' _Dad, please, please stop. It's me. It's me. Please don't hurt me._ '

' _I'm a boy. I know I am. Why do I look like this?_ '

' _Shut up! Shut up! You don't have to rub it in my face! I know you're special and I'm not!_ '

' _You're just mad that she rejected you because she likes girls._ '

The voices always got louder when he was at his mother's parties, when he would have rather been anywhere else. They quieted though, calmed, whenever he entered the woods, as if in awe of the beauty that surrounded him. Today though, they only got louder, more frantic. A girl cried somewhere behind him, while a boy sobbed painfully somewhere to his side.

Suddenly, pain exploded across the back of his skull. He dropped to his knees, his hand breaking through the dirt, dropping him to his face. "What...?" he groaned, blinking the image of a boy standing over him, a skateboard held above him, from his immediate vision.

Hornets were crawling along his skin, angry and buzzing, but they hadn't begun to sting him yet. He lay still, unable to push himself to his feet through the blinding agony wracking his body. He thought that maybe he was going to puke though.

Another explosion of pain, this time a mixture from the back of his head and the first bite of the hornets dissolved his vision, and all he knew was darkness.

 **Blue** :

Blue stared out from between a set of mirrors. Her family stood outside their radius, watching her curiously, their brows pulled together in confusion. They whispered among themselves, and she knew the whispers pertained to her.

"Who is she? Do we know her?" Orla asked, blinking at her with boredom in her eyes, "She's not psychic, she's not even a sensate. How could she be part of our family?"

"B-but I am part of your family. You're my cousin. I'm a Sargeant," Blue told her, indignation plaguing her. Why would Orla say something like that? She was mean, certainly, but Orla had never been cruel.

Persephone shook her head. "No, I do not know her."

Blue gaped at the woman. "Persephone, why would-" She started towards the women and Mr. Gray, but her feet were stuck in place. She couldn't move an inch. "Mom?" she whispered, fear owning her.

Maura shook her head slowly. "I can't see how she could be my daughter. She obviously doesn't belong with us. It looks like she doesn't belong to any others either. Poor thing doesn't even know herself. Do you think we should help her?"

"What are you saying Mom? I'm your daughter! My name is Blue Sargeant. You are my mother and Artemis is my father! I make everything louder for psychics and I'm a sensate! I do know myself!" Blue shouted at her, struggling at the invisible hold that kept her rooted in place. She stared in mounting horror as the others shook their heads.

"There's no way to help someone who doesn't know themselves," Mr. Gray murmured, glancing at her.

"I do know myself! Listen to me!"

"You can't help someone who doesn't even have a reflection. She's already lost. She'll never belong anywhere," Calla spat. She was the first to turn away.

Glancing into the mirror, Blue stumbled back, falling and pressing her back to the mirror behind her. She had no reflection. Looking between her hands and the mirror, she couldn't understand how it was all possible.

"Just leave her. She's already lost."

When Blue looked back to her family, they were all gone.

 **Adam** :

Light cut across Adam's eyes. He blinked into it. He was sitting in a closet, his back pressed against the back wall. The light filtered through the slits of the doors.

"Daddy, it's me. It's Isaac," a small, young voice whispered.

Adam had always liked the name Isaac, had thought that if he had a little brother, that's what he would have wanted his name to be. On hands and knees, he crawled towards the door, tilting his head back and forth, up and down, until he had a relatively clear view of the room.

His father, tall and hulking and insidious, stood over a young boy huddled in a corner. Adam would have thought it was his younger self if not for the name and the _eyes_. They were not the eyes that Adam wore so reluctantly, but the eyes that glowed with the color of his father's and fear, so much fear. "It's all your fault, you little bastard," his father snarled, taking a step closer to the boy, hatred rolling off of him in waves, "You and your bastard brother's. You've ruined my life."

Adam was terrified. He clutched at the slats of the door, hearing the thin wood creak beneath his hand. "No," he whispered, watching his father step ever closer to the boy, "No, leave him alone."

"Daddy, please, I've been good. I didn't do anything wrong," the boy whispered, pressing back into the wall, but there was no where else for him to go. He was cornered.

"You were born, that's what you did wrong," his father snarled, raising his fist and bringing it down with as much force as he could muster.

"No!" Adam shouted, shooting to his feet. His cheek throbbed and his head spun as if he had been the one to be struck, as if this were the first time his father had ever hit him all over again. He jerked at the doorknob, but the door didn't budge. It didn't even rattle. "No! Leave him alone! Dad, stop it!"

"Adam!" the boy shouted, "Help me, please!"

Over and over again, his father hit the boy, his cries of pain eclipsing Adam's shouts. "Stop it!" Adam shouted again, slamming his shoulder into the door until it was bruised and aching, "He never did anything! Leave him alone!"

He went silent when the boy's cries ceased all together. Horror twisting through his veins, he stared through the slats on the door. "No, no, no," he whispered, his legs threatening to give out beneath him. This couldn't have happened. He should have been able to save the boy, his brother. He should have been able to keep him from growing up knowing what it felt like to have his father hate him.

His father turned to the closet, staring Adam down. "Remember that you were the one who left. This is your fault."

 **Ronan** :

Ronan was thrust into his dream the moment he closed his eyes. Light cut through the darkness, and he was surrounded.

"Get the fuck away from me," he snarled, glaring around at the group of boys who had him cornered in the locker room after his boxing lessons with his father and Declan. They had already left for home or work or school, leaving him to do the same. He would have if the idiots around him had decided to be fuckweeds at school instead of in the women's locker room at the gym. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest, reminding him that he hadn't had time to put his binder on properly before they'd waltzed in.

This, this was one of the reasons he hated people.

The teens looked between each other, smirking to themselves like this was all a hilarious joke to them. "No, I don't think we will," a boy Ronan would have found attractive under normal circumstances said, but being cornered didn't seem to count as ' _normal_ '.

"I think that if you don't leave me the hell alone right the fuck now, I'm going to kick all of your asses," he snapped, glad for once that he was never in a hurry to unbind his wrists after a workout. He was nearly on eye level with the guy who had spoken, just barely shy of towering over the others surrounding him.

The circle crowed delightedly, pressing forward. "The little girl thinks she's a bad ass!" one of them laughed, stepping closer.

"One more step, and I'll punch your lights out," Ronan snarled, standing his ground as they advanced closer. There was only a wall at his back, and he was too proud to press his back to it like it would protect him. "And I'm a guy, dick."

"You sure don't sound like one. Or look like one for that matter."

"No one asked your opinion."

"Well, if you're so sure that you're a guy, why don't you pull down your pants and show us? You'll have a dick down there if you're really a guy, won't you?"

Ronan snapped his teeth together audible as the guy on his other side took his next step forward. "Gender doesn't work like that."

The lead guy rolled his eyes, a patronizing smile curling up the corners of his mouth. "I'm pretty sure it does." Stepping closer, he let his eyes scan Ronan up and down. "What do you say, boys? Do we want to show Ms. Lynch what it actually means to be a guy? We'll make her scream like a girl."

Throwing out his fist, Ronan cut off the cackle of the guy to his left, feeling the satisfying crunch of a broken nose beneath his knuckles. He caught another in the jaw, but just as quickly as he'd turned violent, they'd locked his arms above his head and shoved him to the ground. He kicked out wildly, causing a few more injuries before they caught his legs, pinning them down.

"Don't fucking touch me!" he spit, glaring up at the lead guy.

A hideous smile turned up the corners of his eyes. "Oh, I don't think you have a choice in the anymore, little girl."

…..

Ronan walked the corridor with only a nurse at his side, his head held high even as his emotions pulled his eyes towards the ground, trying to bow his head in shame and guilt. The sharp, cloying scent of antiseptic clogged his throat.

Everything was a blur. There was a kindly old nurse that touched his elbow reassuringly every few moments. A tall, plump doctor who talked to him as if he were just any other person, who told him that everything was going to be alright, that this was a viable option.

He remembered her questions, her answers, his answers. She nodded and said, "I won't ask you to relive the experience, but I do have a few questions for you. First, have you had an abortion before?"

"No."

"Was the incident you mentioned the only incident of its kind?"

Ronan paused, the feeling of having his limbs pinned to the floor flashing through his mind. "Yes. They couldn't exactly do it again. Did you know that it only takes 2.2 pounds of pressure to rip of male genitalia?"

The doctor blinked at him before nodding. "I did actually. Did you look that up after?" Ronan nodded. "I don't know many people who could manage that. Now, before this incident, were you sexually active, or have you been sexually active since?"

"Yes, I was, but I haven't been since then."

"Did you have multiple partners before the incident?"

"No, just one."

"Is there any possibility that the baby could be your partner's child?"

Ronan paused, trying to remember if they'd ever been unsafe, but everything that ever happened with him was a blur, a smear of colors and sounds. He couldn't imagine him as a father anyway. "No."

She'd had him lay on a cot, coated his abdomen in cold, thick goo. She'd told him that this was no longer a viable option, that he was already in the second trimester, that he was too far along for them to help him in this way. She'd told him that they could help him in other ways though, with vitamins and possibilities for after his term was up.

"No, no, that's can't be right. It only happened a month ago!" Ronan shouted, sitting up quickly on the cot.

The doctor smiled sadly. "Then that incident was not when your children were conceived."

His head swam. This was too much. It was all too much. "Children?" he whispered.

She turned the screen towards him. "Twins, Mr. Lynch."

…..

"Ms. Lynch," a voice coaxed in the echoing quiet after he'd stopped screaming at his father, his brothers, his mother, "Ms. Lynch, do you want to hold them?"

Ronan peeled his eyes open. He hurt everywhere, and his fingers uncurled from his mother's centimeter by centimeter. Exhaustion weighed down his body. He was hot and sticky, covered in sweat and blood. They were there, though, held in the arms of two nurses, one swathed in a pink blanket and the other in a blue blanket, making soft newborn noises.

The tears that had already been gathered along his lashes spilled over as he turned his face into his pillow. "No, get them out of here." He couldn't look at them, because if he looked at them too long, he'd want to hold them. His arms already ached to feel their weight cradled against his chest. If he held them, though, he'd want to keep them. He couldn't do that to them. He would be a terrible parent, and he couldn't do that to them.

Aurora had told him that they could afford two more children to feed, that they had enough room for them, but he couldn't do it. They would be far better off growing up away from him, away from his decisions and mistakes, away from their father. Their father had no idea about them, and if Ronan had it his way, that's how it would stay. Ronan might have been a terrible parent, but their father would just fuck their lives up.

The doctor's smile faltered. "Are you sure, Ms. Lynch?" he asked, "You don't want to hold them before you name them? This will be the last time you get to see them."

"I said no!" Ronan shouted. Aurora brushed tears from his cheeks as he watched the two nurses bustle from the room over her shoulder. Kissing his forehead gently, she tugged Ronan against her chest, holding him there as he shattered.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, waking up is worse than the nightmare itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter is short for reasons.

  
**Noah** :

Noah woke with a gasp, a sob on his lips. The back of his head ached with the thrum of his pulse, and bile rose in his throat. His sobs were wild, uncontrolled, violent enough to make him hiccup as he rolled over to vomit onto his bedroom floor.

"Noah, hey Noah!" Natalie called, her hands on his face, wiping his tears from his cheeks as she'd done so many times after she'd saved him. His mattress dipped with her weight, warming slowly to her body. She'd been there every night after that horrible afternoon, soothing his terror, calming him until he could drift back into a fitful sleep. He'd been in the hospital for nearly a month, two weeks of that spent in a coma, and she'd been there every night, hugging him tightly around the waist, telling him that no one would ever be able to hurt him again if she had anything to say about it.

He'd been a failure of an older brother, he knew that. Knew it like he knew the back of his hand, or the nuances of the engine of his mustang, or the intricacies of Barry's obsessions and his large hands. He was supposed to be the one protecting her, not the other way around. She should have never had to hurt anyone for his sake. She should have never had to drag him from the forest as his blood slicked down her shoulder. She should have never had to shake him from his nightmares, or heard him sob over the phone.

He'd lied to her, telling her he didn't remember much of anything, not how he'd gotten there nor who had done it, that he only remembered the agony and feeling of betrayal. She'd never told him that Barry had been the one to hurt him, had never had the heart to tell him his best friend would have sacrificed him to get what he wanted. That was alright, though, because he had never told her a lot of things too. She had told him though, so so many times over, that he should request a new roommate, if anything. It was already too late by that point, though. He was sullied, broken. Barry's hand prints were burned, bruised into his flesh.

She shushed him, stroking his hair, moving a trashcan beneath his mouth as he cried hard, ragged tears and saliva and bile spilled from his lips. "It's alright. You're alright, Noah. We're in your room, not the forest. Everything is fine." She startled to stillness as laughter spilled from his lips. "Noah?" she asked tentatively, fear lacing through her voice.

"He's gone. He's gone and he's never coming back," he laughed, pushing his hair from his forehead with a trembling hand, a fragile smile pulling apart his lips, "He's going to be locked away, and he'll never be able to hurt me again. He won't be able to use me, for a sacrifice or my body." Flipping onto his back, his laughter morphed back into sobs. "He'll never be able to touch me again."

Natalie was silent beside him, her weight and warmth a comforting reminder that he wasn't alone, that he didn't need to allow Barry to destroy him so he wouldn't be alone. He reached out, and felt the others waking around him.

**Gansey** :

Gansey woke with a night-shattering scream. It reverberated though the Lynch family home, dragging the other occupants from their dreams with the force of a thousand oxen. His scream rose high and shrill and piercing, his hands slipping across his skin with the sweat that soaked his clothing. He slapped and clawed invisible insects away from his body, flailing in his bed.

"Richard!" Helen shouted, bursting through his door, climbing onto the bed and grabbing his wrists. "Richard, stop! There's nothing there! It was a nightmare!" Her fingers dug painfully into his flesh, her nails piercing through his skin.

He struggled against her hold, trying to jerk his wrists from her grasp, but she held steady. "They're everywhere! They're going to kill me! Get them off of me! Get them off of me!" he shouted at her, a breathless sob breaking through his teeth as his lungs decided that air was an unobtainable substance. He gasped for breath, his movements coming to a halt as strength and oxygen made their way from his body. Black spots bloomed in his vision.

"Richard, breathe. You're alright. There's nothing here, just you and me, Chainsaw and Ronan. That's all, nothing else, nothing to hurt you," Helen told him, loosening her grip slowly, watching him closely as he inhaled one breath after another. "Deeply, breathe deeply. You're going to be alright. I promise."

"You can't promise that," he whispered frantically, staring at her, "You can't promise that. You can get hurt at any time, by anyone. Noah was almost shot, and I got his thumb broken on the gun. You can't promise that because it would be lie. You can't. You can't. You can't." He buried his face against her shoulder, breathing harshly.

Releasing his wrists, she grimaced at the half moons cut into his skin from her nails. She grabbed his shoulders. "Alright, alright, I won't promise. I won't promise."

Gansey stared down at his hands resting in his lap. Blood was crusted beneath his nails.

**Blue** :

Blue rolled from her bed, still half asleep, half delirious, slamming into everything that she possibly could as she scrambled from the room her mother and Mr. Gray shared most days. He was gone though, off being a hit man or hunting down a strange object for a client or teaching a class. She pushed into their room without knocking, standing in the doorway, worrying at the hem of her oversized t-shirt until Maura rolled over to blink at her.

"Blue?" she mumbled, glancing at her clock, "What's the matter? It's very early. What's wrong?" Blue dove beneath the covers as Maura lifted them for her, wrapping her arms around her mother. "It must have been a really awful nightmare. You haven't done this since you were a child." She stroked her fingers through her daughters hair, waiting patiently for her to spill her fear.

"Do you know who I am?" Blue finally whispered, true fear filling her voice.

Maura's hand paused. "Of course I do. You're my daughter. Your name is Blue. You're a sensate, and you make things louder. Why wouldn't I know you?"

"You don't care that I'm not psychic? That I didn't know I was a sensate until recently?"

"Of course not, why would that matter? You're my daughter, Blue."

Blue nodded, rubbing her tears into the fabric of her mother's shirt, tightening her hold around her waist.

**Adam** :

"No!" Adam shouted, rolling from his bed onto his floor. He scrambled away, his back slamming into his neat, makeshift desk. His breath came in quick, short gasps, his eyes darting around his small, shitty apartment in search of his father. It was always his father. Everything was always his father.

Burying his face in his hands, he shook his head violently. "No, no, no. It was just a nightmare. It was just a nightmare," he repeated over and over, his body shuddering with the force he was shoving into forgetting the details of the dream. He could smell copper, see crimson spattered across the walls, dripping from his father's knuckles. He could hear the boy's pleas for help, see his mangled remains.

How was he supposed to protect his sibling when he still couldn't face his father's fury, when he was running away? His sibling was going to grow up hurt and afraid and hated, and he wouldn't be able to stop it. There was nothing he could do. He was worthless, worthless, worthless.

An arm, slim and familiar, slid around his shoulders, spreading warmth down his back. A soft, gentle voice shushed him. "It's alright, Adam. It was just a nightmare. You're alright, it wasn't real," Natalie murmured, pulling his head from his hands, into her shoulder. "I'm here for you, for all of you."

He buried his face against her neck, folding in on himself and curling into her. She pulled him against her, wrapping both arms around him as the first sob wracked his body. "What am I going to do? What if he hurts them? What if he kills them? How can I protect them? I have to protect them," he whispered, clutching at the front of her shirt.

"You'll protect them, you'll see. I know you will. I have faith in you, Adam. You won't let your father hurt them," she told him confidently, stroking her fingers down the curve of his back. "I know the kind of person you are, Adam, and I know that you won't let them be hurt no matter what."

"You can't know that. I'm a coward," he whispered.

"I do know that, and I also know that you're not a coward. Believe me, Adam, even if it's the only thing you can do right now. Believe me, because I believe in you."

**Ronan** :

It had been a very long time since Ronan had cried. He couldn't remember the last time he had. He woke with his mouth bone dry and tears slipping down his cheeks. Somewhere in one of the other rooms, he could hear someone screaming, or was it two people? He couldn't make himself care. He could only think of the children he'd given up, the children he hoped had been adopted together, but knew had probably grown up being pushed from one foster home to another.

Letting the tears flow freely, he allowed himself to feel the regret and guilt he'd forced away all those years ago. Why had he given them up? He couldn't remember his reasons anymore. It had seemed like the right decision at the time, but it hadn't been. The right decision would have been to keep them, to raise them. They would have had a family instead of just each other.

He should have kept them. Even with everything that had happened between then and now; his transition, Niall Lynch's murder, Aurora Lynch falling into a self-induced coma, the fighting and the drugs and their father. They would have been better with him because the fighting and the drugs and their father never would have happened if he'd had them, he was sure.

He should have held them, learned them, watched them grow into their names. He should have been raising them, teaching them values, teaching them to defend those weaker than them, teaching them that they could be whoever they wanted, no matter who that was.

It was too late. They were gone, they would forever be gone. He'd never get to meet them, hug them, love them. There was no one to blame, but himself.

After the first sob fell from his mouth, he couldn't stop the torrent that followed.


	10. Chapter 10

**Ronan** :

Ronan stormed out of the kitchen, a carton of ice cream in his hand and a tray laden down with a steaming kettle adorned with a tea cozy stitched with ravens, three cups, and sugar and honey. He set the tray on the kitchen table where Gansey and Helen sat silently, Gansey scratching obsessively every few moments.

Only glancing at him for the space of a heartbeat, Ronan threw himself into one of the many chairs across from the siblings and peeled off the lid to his carton. Spreading three spoons, he held them out to the pair until the each took one before shoving his spoon unceremoniously into the carton's depths.

Gansey stared at him. "It is... very early in the morning to be eating ice cream."

Through a mouthful of sticky, melting cream, Ronan growled, "I don't see how that matters right now, not after last night." Nodding, Gansey beckoned with his spoon, scooping a huge glob out for himself.

Pouring the tea, Helen rolled her eyes at them. "You two act as if your significant other of eight years has just told you they've been cheating on you for four of those years."

"Not quite," Gansey muttered, scratching at his neck.

She slapped his hand away. "Stop that, there's nothing there. You're fine now." Exhaling deeply, Helen's features relaxed marginally, her voice softening. "I understand that I'm a stranger here, at least for Ronan, but you two can talk to me. You act as if it wasn't just Gansey having his nightmare, but the two of you."

Gansey and Ronan locked eyes over the ice cream container. She wasn't entirely wrong on her assumption. Though the five of them had been trapped in their own nightmares, each particular to them and their own house of horrors, they relatively knew what had gone on in each others' nightmares. It was more like a game of guess and check where the other participants didn't have the option to lie. Though some had already guessed more than others.

Good will and understanding and support were circulating through their cluster, but they were tinged with residual fear and guilt and betrayal.

Adam cupped Ronan's hand, pulling the spoon to his mouth. He sucked the ice cream from it, humming as the sweetness exploded across his tongue. "Cookie dough, my favorite," he mumbled, covering his mouth as he chewed through the bits.

Staring at him, Ronan licked his lips, the taste spreading through his mouth as if he'd just kissed Adam, and oh, he so wanted to.

Gansey jerked his head up, narrowing his eyes knowingly at Ronan. "You know we can feel that, right? Seriously, just kiss already. We're all drowning in the sexual tension you're throwing off," he muttered a tad more irately than usual.

Ronan had to force his face into neutrality as a heavy blush stained Adam's cheeks.

"I'm going to ignore the level of shade you just threw, Dick, and go dress." Picking up the cup of tea she'd poured herself, she turned towards the door. "By the time I come back, I want you both to have decided on telling me what's going on, quietly suffering without putting the rest of us down, or getting over it." She slid from the room before they could reply.

The trio listened carefully until they heard the shower start upstairs.

"You should really tell them," Adam said, "Gansey can help."

"Help with what?" Gansey asked, glancing between the two of them.

Ronan scowled. "You don't know what you're talking about Parrish." They knew that wasn't exactly a true statement though.

Adam had been guessing at Ronan's nightmare since they'd all woken, trying to distract himself while simultaneously looking for ways to help. "You know that I do, at least vaguely, and I'm telling you, you should ask Gansey for help, especially if you're actually going to look for them."

"I'll help with anything you ask me to, but I'm best at finding things," Gansey piped up, ducking his head as the pair glared at him. He dug out a spoonful of ice cream, flicking through his phone without purpose.

They turned back to each other. "They are seven-years-old, Adam. They probably believe they're not wanted. What if I just fuck them up?"

Adam smiled softly, resisting the urge to reach up and stroke his thumb across Ronan's cheek. "You'll be fine, and if you mess up, well, there's four more of us here to set you right again. You can't be any worse of a father than mine is, than I'm probably going to be."

"If I can't say that I'm going to be a shitty father than neither can you," Ronan growled. His face fell as he asked, "What if they've been adopted and don't want anything to do with me?"

"Trust me, they'll want everything to do with you," Adam told him. They were silent for a long moment before they turned to face Gansey.

**Blue** :

Blue's sigh turned into a full blown groan as she fell back against her bed, staring at the poems and saying and quotes she'd copied onto her ceiling over the years she'd occupied her room. Running her eyes over each word, nostalgia and a little ball of homesickness coiled in her stomach. If she was already feeling homesick and she wasn't even at the airport, it was going to be a feat to pull off a whole year of schooling abroad.

"Why are there words on your ceiling?"

Following the roll of her eyes, Blue stared at Gansey. She could taste the mint on his tongue, smell it on his breath. "Because I put them there."

His eyes skimmed over them slowly, thoughtfully, reading each one through once and then again. "If I had to describe you as a person, these are the words I would show as examples. Maybe I would even mention the fact that they are scrawled on the ceiling."

Heat flushed across her face, and she scowled. She turned her eyes back to the ceiling. "Flattery will get you nowhere," she muttered.

"Well, I don't consider it flattery as it is the truth." Sitting up, he stared at her mess of a suitcase and the clothes he'd been laying on. "Why does your room look like a war zone? Are you repacking because you forgot something?"

Groaning, Blue turned her back to him. "No, that's the battle zone of just starting to pack."

"I thought you would have already been packed by now."

"Gansey, there are few things I procrastinate to do, but leaving is one of them."

Gansey was silent for a moment. "I can't say that I understand. I've always been good at picking up and moving on without saying good bye, though I haven't done that since I was seventeen." Sliding form the bed, he crouched in front of Blue's suitcase, dividing her clothing into two piles; one that would do well for her in England and the other clothing that would pretty much be useless to her. "It's not that I don't love my family, or don't like the people I've met in my travels, quite the opposite actually, but... it's something I've never been able to help."

Blue joined him on the floor, watching him fold and roll her clothing slowly before diving in herself. "I'm not going to lie, Gansey, that sounds lonely," she murmured, sitting cross legged and leaning into his shoulder. "But you're not alone now, and you don't have to say goodbye to us."

He nodded absently, tilting his head so that it rested on the top of hers. They remained like that, uncomfortable, but content all the same, until Calla called her down for dinner.

**Noah** :

If Natalie found him where he was, wrapped up like a Noah burrito in the blankets that still smelled like Barry, curled around his best friend's pillow, she'd throw a fit until the day he died. She'd rage and scream and probably burn everything Barry had ever touched, but if that were the case, she'd have to burn him along with all of Barry's things as well. She'd throw insults and curses, and when she was done, she wouldn't look at him for a week.

This, this thing he felt for Barry, this mixture of fear and love and hatred and longing, were things inherent to him as a person now. Despite everything Barry had done to him, despite that he'd tried to kill him _twice_ , despite that he'd laid his hands on him, he'd still been Noah's best friend. He'd been the most constant person in Noah's life since they were young, and that was something he couldn't easily purge from his body.

Loneliness coiled deep in his body, and as he curled more tightly around Barry's pillow, his scent enveloping and overlapping him. That knot loosened just the slightest bit.

The bed dipped down behind him as a body slid in against his back, an arm sliding over his shoulder. He pulled his head from the covers, murmuring, "Barry?"

"No, not Barry, Noah," Blue whispered back, her breath brushing gently across his cheek, "Just Blue."

"And Adam," Adam said as he lowered himself onto the edge of the mattress in front of Noah, lying down as close to Noah as he could manage without being completely in his personal space. He propped his head on his arm, blinking tiredly at the pair. "We're here for you, Noah, you know that, right?"

Noah nodded. "I know that." He buried himself back into the blankets, shivering as Adam's arms joined Blue's around him.

"Noah, I know you don't want to hear this," Blue began, her voice soft and soothing, her fingers stroking through his hair, "I know I wouldn't if I lost someone that was important to me, but dwelling on him, dwelling on someone who was so toxic, who hurt you so easily without a thought, that's not healthy."

"We know that you're not going to just forget him. Important people don't work like that, even if they are horrible," Adam told him, his arms tightening around him, "God knows I'm one of the last person who can say 'just forget those important, horrible people'. It doesn't work like that, we know, but you can't let him hang on you. If you do, it's just going to be destructive, and you're not going to be able to heal, not like you need to."

Blue chuckled softly, burying her nose in Noah's shoulder. "I think you should be taking your own advice, Adam."

Shrugging, Adam said, "You might be right." He rested his cheek against the top of Noah's head. "The point being, Noah, is that we want to help you heal from how Barry and every other bed person in your life has wounded you, but you also have to be helping us make you healthy again. This won't work without your cooperation."

He knew they were right. Natalie had been telling him something similar for a little more than a year, after she'd taken her first psychology class and broken up with her first girlfriend and joined a blogging site or two, but she was right all the same.

He nodded in agreement, but buried his face more forcefully into Barry's pillow. "Alright, but... but I'm going to be unhealthy for a little longer. I'm... I'm not ready to get better just yet, but I will be. Just give me a little bit longer."

Blue's and Adam's arms tightened around him was the only response he needed.

**Gansey** :

Gansey sighed loudly. This would have been slightly easier if Ronan hadn't given him only a few details -their names, which orphanage they had been placed in, their ages- and left him to begin his search. It would have also been easier if he hadn't ferried Helen back to the underground fighting ring for one last bit of fun before she left to go back to Virginia and he dragged Ronan back to London with him to pop in with Mallory and check in with his college. Second to him, she was the best researcher he knew, she just needed an incentive.

Her legs crossed and hands clutching her thin ankles, Blue leaned into his field of view, looking over the information displayed on his laptop screen and the few things he'd found out written on a notepad. "What are you doing? Researching children? Looking to adopt?"

The corner of his mouth quirking into a grin, Gansey leaned around her to save the document he'd been taking down notes on and copying information to to look over later. "No, but Ronan might be."

Pursing her lips, Blue nodded. "Makes sense."

His eyebrow flew up as he looked at her. "How does that make sense?"

Blue rolled her eyes. "You're the one who's been living with him, I thought you would have noticed by now, but Ronan is kind of a family man. Just a point of fact, he goes to church with a brother he can't stand to appease the brother that he can."

Gansey nodded in agreement. "He does kind of give me the same feeling that you do. You're very family oriented as well."

Blue flashed her teeth at him. "I'm nothing like Ronan."

"Oh, I think you two are more like each other than you think. You're both made of the same impossible stuff." He laughed as she shoved at his shoulder, pushing him over.

"Whatever," Blue snapped with bad temper, "What can I help with? I don't have anything to do for the next few hours while I wait for my flight and I want to see what these babies look like. I'll bet they're adorable even with Ronan being their genetic donor. I wonder what their other genetic donor looks like."

"That's something we can find out, I think," Gansey said, sitting up and pulling the laptop back towards him. They worked steadily for close to an hour, but in the end, they got side tracked and watched a show about murder husbands until Gansey nodded off and Blue had to catch her flight.

**Adam:**

Adam stared despondently at his suitcase, his empty apartment. Everything he'd known for the past few years, everything he owned, had easily fit into his beat up suitcase save for the rusty old car Boyd had forced onto him after his graduation. Against his better judgment, he was still going to Germany, and with his mother already on a bus to Chicago, he felt less pressed to stay and more of a need to flee to the far corners of the earth.

"I guess I should probably start heading to the airport," he muttered to himself, standing reluctantly from the edge of his bed, "I'll be there for a few hours, but better to be late than sorry." He shoved his keys into his pocket, reaching for his suitcase.

His door flew open, crashing against the wall. Adam scrambled back as he father stormed through, a slip of paper crushed in his fist. "Who do you think you are?" he roared, stalking towards Adam. He reeked of alcohol and hatred as he flung the paper at Adam. It was crisp and thick, despite having been wadded in a sweaty fist for the better part of the day.

Adam stared down at the bus ticket, terror flooding his veins, paralyzing him like the worst kind of poison. "I- I don't k-know what you're t-talking about," he stammered.

"Don't lie to me, Adam!" he shouted, standing over Adam with unrestrained fury flashing through his eyes, "I know that you're lying! Stand up and look me in the eye when I'm talking to you!"

Hurrying to get his feet under him, he didn't see that fist that his father threw. Stars burst before his eyes, and he was back on the ground before he even had a chance to stand.

"I know what you did! Buying a bus ticket for your mother so she could run away and have another bastard child!"

Anger flared in Adam's body, and he struggled to stand, his head spinning. Blood ran down his lips, dripping off of his chin. "Don't call them a bastard," he growled, his anger making him heady and brave as he steadied on his feet, "They are your child too. You helped create them, just like you helped create me."

Robert Parrish sneered. "Were."

Adam's head jerked up to him, his eyes finding his father's. "What?"

"The moment I found out what you two had done, what you were planning on doing, I dragged your mother to the clinic. I sat in the room why they took care of it. There isn't going to be another bastard that I have to take care of."

"You're the bastard," Adam hissed, taking a step towards his father.

He struck Adam again, sending him stumbling into the edge of the bed, his deaf ear throbbing and hot. "Don't you talk like that to me, Adam! You may be grown now, but I am still your father, and you will respect me!"

Ronan was there in that moment, taking over for Adam as Gansey had done for Noah. He pushed off the bed, wiping blood from his lips with his arm. "What respect is that, you swine?" he snarled, taking a step towards Adam's father.

The man spluttered, not used to his son fighting back. "The respect that every son owes his father for bringing him into this world and raising his sorry ass!"

Ronan blinked slowly at the man, cracking his knuckles. "No, you earn respect by being a good father, by not treating his children or wife like muck on his shoe. You earn respect by taking responsibility for the lives you help create. You've never done either of those things, so I don't see where you got the idea that you deserve respect." He bared his teeth, snarling, "You're a bastard and a pig, and your wife didn't deserve to have her unborn child taken from her because of you."

"Don't you talk to me like that!" Robert Parrish shouted, throwing another punch, but Ronan was already moving, his fists flying into his face and body with calculated precision, almost as if each strike had been choreographed. He stumbled back, his nose broken and blood slipping passed his lips as Ronan shoved him back through the doorway.

Adam returned to his body then, his knuckles aching, his chest heaving with each satisfied breath. "Don't ever try to contact me again, don't even call me your son. You've never been a father to me. You deserve every bruise and injury you ever gave me ten fold, and for her sake, I hope my mother leaves you for what you've just done to her," he spat, slamming the door on the man who was supposed to be his father.

Turning, he found Ronan standing behind him, a proud smirk curving his lips. "Thank you," he muttered, glancing towards the floor.

"You're welcome," Ronan murmured, taking his hand and pulling him towards the small bathroom. He pushed him down onto the toilet lid, ripping off a long bit of toilet paper to dab at the blood on Adam's face. "Good news, your nose isn't broken and all of your teeth are intact."

"Will I be able to get on the plane without being asked any questions?"

"No. You're royally fucked in that respect."

Laughing, feeling lighter than he ever had in years, Adam stared up at Ronan. "Really, thank you."

"You only needed to say it once," Ronan growled irately.

"Yes, but I wanted to say it again." With the taste of blood and victory still in his mouth, Adam leaned forward, and kissed Ronan like they'd never kiss again.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is finally on the same continent.

**Ronan** :

Ronan rummaged around his mother's bedside table, looking for... something. He wasn't sure what it was at that point, he just knew that it was. He hadn't found whatever it was in his room or Declan's or Matthew's, so he'd moved on. He assumed that it was a picture of his family. There was always one in his wallet, but the one he'd recently had had gotten torn to shreds by an opponent he'd pissed off during on of his fights.

He dragged his nails across the back of the drawer, then beneath it. The edge of an envelope caught under his nail. Frowning, he pried the envelope free, drawing it out and towards him. He sat on the edge of the bed, one that had been made for a little less than three years now, staring at the envelope.

"What's that?" Adam asked, sitting down beside Ronan, his hand resting between them, a hair's width from him.

"I don't know," he said slowly, turning the envelope over and over in his hands. "It could be... anything really."

Adam stared at him. "Are you sure about that? Anything?"

"No," he admitted, pulling the flap out from where it had been tucked into the envelope. Stored within the envelope were two pictures. One of Ronan just before he'd given birth, frowning, but happy as Mathew covered his legs with sand to construct a mermaid tail. The other was of two newborns set in the same bassinet, laid on a pastel green blanket, their hats the same shade of green. They must have been changed after they'd been taken from his hospital room.

His breath stilled in his chest.

"They're beautiful," Adam murmured, leaning in closer to get a better look at the twins, "Are they...?"

"Ida and Cian," Ronan said, breathless, closing his eyes and tilting his head back toward the ceiling. "I didn't know she'd gotten a picture of them."

Adam nodded. "Just in case you ever wanted to know what they looked like, and to remind herself that they're out there somewhere, I'd imagine." He paused, staring down at their tiny faces again. "You did good, Lynch."

Ronan laughed hollowly. "They look like their bastard father."

"I'll bet you they don't now. Infants are more likely to resemble their fathers because the father is more likely to protect and nurture the infant if they can spot their traits in the baby. Once that child grows older though, that's less likely. So, I will bet you my next meal, that they look incredibly like you now."

Ronan inhaled deeply, dropping his head back forward to look at Adam through half lidded eyes. "Don't make wagers you'll regret, Parrish."

Adam raised an eyebrow at him. "I never make a bet I don't think I can win."

**Gansey** :

"If you two don't hurry up, we'll be late for our flights!" Gansey called from the entryway, tapping his fingers impatiently along his elbow as he stared down at their suitcases.

Helen glided down the hall, twisting her hair up into a loose bun. She wore the flight suit she'd been gifted by one of her Navy friends after she'd gotten her pilot's license. It had been meant as a joke, but it fit her perfectly and she enjoyed wearing it in casual situations. It was only zipped to her waist, the top portion hanging limply over her belt, a black shirt tucked into the trousers. "Calm down, Dick. We've still got plenty of time to spare."

"Lies," Gansey replied, frowning as she slid her arms into the flight suit and zipped it up to her neck. The suit had been stripped of all patches and insignia before being gifted, and the Velcro was slowly falling into disrepair. "Are you _flying_ home?"

"I made a few calls and convinced one of my pilot friends to give me a few lessons in one of their jets since they have to fly back to the States anyway for something or another. A private aircraft company also offered to let me test one of their new models, so I'll be flying from here to the closest airport to the base I'll be flying home from," Helen explained around a mouthful of bobby pins, securing her bangs with them. She patted down her hair, checking for any loose strands before smiling at him. "So, yes, to answer your question, I am flying."

Ronan shuffled down the hallway with Adam trailing behind him, his coat thrown over his arm, staring down at a photo he held in his hand. Glancing up as he neared them, he held the photo out to Gansey.

"What's this?" he asked, staring at the infants cuddled next to each other.

"Cian and Ida," Ronan said simply, his eyes linger on the twins as he moved passed Gansey. He tore his eyes from the photo, swallowing as he snatched up his keys. "Are you two ready yet? We've got to go." Without waiting for a response, he slid his coat on, grabbing a suitcase and dragging it out towards his car.

"They're cute," Noah cooed, looking over Gansey's shoulder at the twins. "Do you think they're going to be as viscous and unapproachable as Ronan?"

Gansey waited until Helen followed after Ronan, dragging her carry on behind her. "There's a high possibility. If Blue is anything to go by, bad temper and attitude are hereditary."

Blue punched him in his arm. "I can hear you, you know?" she growled. Glancing at the picture, she cried, "They are cute! I can't believe Ronan made those precious cinnamon rolls."

"And I can hear you," Ronan snarled, shaking rain from his jacket as he stepped back into the entrance. "And if you think I'm bad, you should really meet their father. There's no saying for taste."

"Is he as much of an asshole as you are?"

"More so."

Blue whistled appreciatively. "You must have been a terrible teenager."

"You have no idea."

Noah laughed delightedly, leaning heavily into Blue, resting his chin on her shoulder. "So what are we going to do?"

Ronan raised an exasperated eyebrow at him as Gansey handed the picture back to him. He slid it into his wallet. "We're going to find them."

**Noah** :

Noah rung the hem of his shirt, staring at the brand new, empty bed that had been set across from his own. Natalie had just drug it up the stairs, explaining that his new roommate deserved better than an asshole's bed. Barry's old bed had been shoved up against the wall, blocking the dreary, rainy light filtering through the window.

"Let's get this into the dumpster, Noah. Your new roommate could show up at any moment," Natalie told him, staring at the bed as if contemplating turning it into an explosive.

"No, I- No-" He shook his head vigorously. Striding towards the window, Noah pulled it open as far as he could. The window was large, encompassing nearly the entirety of the wall. Tilting the bed on its side, he flipped it out his window into the field behind his dorm.

"Or you could do that. That's effective too," Natalie said, staring down at the bed. She was impressed, even if it had just been an act of self preservation or something similar. Noah was already turning towards the door. "Where are you going?"

He stooped, scooping the bed clothes and pillow into his arms. "Can you get the kerosene and matches?"

"Sure, what for?" she asked, rummaging under the sink counter and following after him when she had the items in hand.

"You'll see." He led her down the stairs and around the back of the building to the bed. Tossing the bed clothing and pillow on the pile, he took the kerosene from Natalie.

Blue was beside him in a moment, covering his hand with her own. "Are you sure you want to do this? You can't stop once it's started. You can still have time."

He shook his head vigorously. "No. I want it gone. I want this feeling gone. I want everything to do with him gone. I'm getting a fresh start today with a new roommate who I could possibly make friends with. So, I'm going to start as fresh as I can," he explained, moving her hand from his own, and uncapping the kerosene. "Since the man is gone, the next step is his personal affects. All of his clothes and knick knacks have been taken already. This is the last thing."

"Okay," Blue said, stepping back to watch him spray kerosene across the mattress and bed clothes.

Adam stood beside her, slipping his hand into hers. They slotted their fingers together, and watched as Noah unsuccessfully lit several matches. When one finally caught, they stepped back from the heat as the flames roared to life.

"Noah," Blue called, holding out her hand for him.

He turned back to them, tears thick on his cheeks. Taking her hand, he stepped towards them, burying his face in the crook between Adam and Blue's shoulders. Grabbing Adam's free hand, he squeezed their fingers until his knuckles pressed white against his skin.

**Blue** :

Blue groaned, stretching her arms high over her head as she stood on the curb. Now, she had to find a way to the apartment her college had set her up in. They'd told her that she'd be receiving not only volunteer hours, but a paycheck as well for living with a man who was trying to learn to cope with his anxiety. Squinting at the address in her hand, she blinked as a cab pulled up beside her.

"Need a taxi?" the woman in the front asked, smiling.

Blue smiled back. "That would be lovely. How much is it going to cost to get to this address?" She held the page out to the woman.

Plugging the address into her GPS, she glanced over to Blue. "About 30 pounds. Will that be alright?"

"That'll be perfect."

…..

Blue tapped on the door to the flat she was to live in, shifting her weight from foot to foot as the seconds ticked by into minutes. She was raising her hand to knock on the door again when it swung open, revealing a much older man than she originally thought she'd be living with. She squeaked in surprise, stepping away from him as a lab peeked his head curiously out from between the man's legs.

"Oh, hello there. How can I help you?" he asked through a thick, barely understandable accent.

"Um, M-Mr. Malory? I was told that you had requested a flatmate to begin learning to cope with your anxiety? I was assigned by my college to live with you over my stay in London," she explained, rubbing at her hands self-consciously.

"Oh, lovely, lovely. This was my therapist's idea. He told me it was this or group therapy. You can understand why I wouldn't want to do group therapy. That would be dreadful, just dreadful. Another flatmate could have also been terrible, but you look lovely, so I don't think it'll be a problem." He opened the door wider. "Come in, come in. You look like a drowned rat."

Blue dragged her suitcase along with her, closing the door softly behind her.

"I apologize for the mess. My colleague has been away for the past week or so, and I don't do much cleaning, as you can guess. I believe he is returning today, so you'll meet him soon enough. This will be your room, beside my colleague's. Maybe you can stop him from screaming in the middle of the night when he has his night terrors. I have gotten the best night's sleep over the past week than I have since he moved it. I love the boy like a son, but sometimes, it is a little straining to live with him."

"I'll try my best," Blue murmured, stepping into the room. She rolled her suitcase up against the wall, staring around at the lovely furnishings and the shelves of books lining the walls. It seemed like most of the flat was just a library.

"Would you like a cup of tea?" Malory asked as he shuffled away. The flat door opened, admitting what sounded like a pair of scuffling boys. "Oh, there's my colleague, and it appears he has brought a guest with him."

Blue moved back down the hall, stepping into the kitchen.

"Would you two like tea?" Malory called, already filling the kettle, "Come meet our new flatmate."

"Thanks, that would be much appreciated. We've been traveling for hours, and have just got completely soaked," Malory's colleague called back as he rounded the corner into the kitchen. If either of them had been holding anything, it would have ended up on the floor. "Jane!" Gansey called jovially, grinning widely. Ronan let out a snort of laughter.

Blue scowled. "That's not my name. My name is Blue."

"Oh, what a lovely name. Nice to meet you, Jane. I completely forgot to introduce myself. My name is Malory."

Stepping over to Gansey, Blue shoved a finger into his chest. "I will end you, Richard Gansey, if it's the last thing I do."

Laughing louder, Ronan said, "If there's going to be a fight, make sure to draw blood."

**Adam** :

Adam was exhausted. That was the only word for it. He wasn't just physically tired, his muscles aching, his bones creaking, but emotionally tired as well, as if all the others had been drawing on him to keep going throughout the day.

Standing by the baggage claim, waiting for the carousel to begin turning, his eyelids drooped, his head lulling forward against his chest. Jerking his head back up, he found his suitcase sliding towards him.

Finding a taxi and arriving at the university was like a dream. It was like he was having a terrible night's sleep, when he knew he was asleep, but he was completely aware of his body lying motionless in his bed. He roamed across campus getting completely soaked while he searched for his dorm building. When he found it, he trudged lethargically up the stairs, wondering what his roommate was going to be like. If he spoke German or English or Latin. If he was short or tall. If he was kind or horrible.

Stopping at the door, he tapped lightly on the darkly stained wood.

He was only partly surprised when Natalie opened the door, her eyes going wide. Noah stood behind her, a smile spreading across her lips. He returned the smile, stepping through the doorway as Natalie stepped aside. "Well, I can't say that I was expecting this."

"Neither can I," Noah agreed, holding out a towel to him. "Is this... is this alright?"

Adam smiled reassuringly. "It's perfect, Noah."


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He never imagined that finding them would hurt so much, but feel so amazing.

**Blue** :

Blue had been living with Malory, his dog, and Gansey for the past few weeks, learning to navigate through a home full of men instead of women. It was quite a different experience if she were to put it lightly. School had begun again, bringing along Gansey and Ronan, who had yet to return to the Barnes and his underground boxing carrier and the ex-boyfriend who constantly seemed to be calling him. There had been no more nightmares, no more physical harm, they'd been making steady headway towards finding Cian and Ida, and Noah had remained solid and conscious.

Everything was going perfectly, smoothly... until it wasn't. She knew things had to change sooner or later. As Calla had often told her, all good things come to an end eventually. Persephone would add to that though so that the saying would become, "All good things come to an end eventually, only to make way for something better." Blue desperately hoped that Persephone wasn't wrong. She'd never doubted the women in her family, and she was not going to get into the habit now.

…..

"I swear to everything holy, if I have to wake up because of your moaning one more time, I am going to feed you to Malory's pigeons," Blue threatened, glaring playfully at Ronan out of the corner of her eye as she sipped at her tea.

Rain fell in a drizzle around them, illuminated by the street lamps lining the walkway. Most days, Gansey drove Blue home after she was done with work since he got out of class at the same time. Days that she didn't have work though, Ronan waited after his classes until her last class was over to walk her home.

"I do not moan in my sleep," Ronan objected, his snarl harsh as always, but a shot more venomous than it had been as of late.

Adam walked on Ronan's other side, laughing. "You do, actually."

"How would you know? You don't sleep in the same bed as me."

"No," Blue interjected, "but I do, which was a mistake. I should have let you live on the coach, that way the whole flat could hear you moaning."

Ronan snapped his teeth at her. "I do not moan. How would you know if I was anyway? It could easily be Gansey."

"One, we've been over this before, Gansey is demisexual, and before either of you try to give me a fucking lesson, Gansey being demisexual means that he would not be moaning Adam's name into his pillow, fuck you very much," she snapped back, grinning into her cup as she watched the scarlet blush color his pale skin. He pressed his lips tightly together, and her grin grew into a full on smile. He wouldn't be arguing anymore. She'd only ever gotten him to talk once so far when he was embarrassed, and it had turned into a stutter fest that had had her rolling on the ground.

"Gansey may not have a reason to moan my name in his sleep, but he sure does have a reason to moan yours," Adam said lightly, turning his head quickly towards the sky as Blue sharply looked at him.

It was Blue's turn to remain silent as Ronan snorted. "That attitude is why I moan his name in my sleep."

Blue rolled her eyes. "No, you moan his name in your sleep because you want in his pants or you want him in your pants or maybe both, but refuse to buy a train ticket to go and visit him in Berlin."

"He lives with Noah!" Ronan protested, but did not deny, she noticed triumphantly.

"And Natalie," Adam added.

"And his ex."

"And it can't work the other way because Ronan lives with you, Gansey, and Malory."

"Yeah, two old men, a shrimp and a dog."

Blue groaned loudly. "Then get a hotel room. It's not that hard."

Ronan stilled, his mouth parted in leeway of a response. He froze as if all life had left his body. Not a muscle moved. He didn't even blink.

Blue and Adam glanced at each other, turning completely to face him. "Ronan?" Adam asked tentatively, reaching out cautious fingers to trail across his cheek.

Ronan inhaled sharply, eyes flickering towards Adam, then to Blue. "Don't you hear it?"

Another glance. "Hear what?" they asked quietly.

"The screaming."

**Ronan** :

The screams and sobs rang in his head, drowning out the questions, blocking the concerned looks. They were layered over one another, as if it were two voices doing the same thing. He could hear it even as the screams and sobs congealed into words. ' _Please help_!' the voices cried, two distinct cadences that were still very similar in many ways, ' _Please, someone, anyone help us! We're bleeding a lot! We're scared! They're not going to help us!_ '

Ronan stared at Blue and Adam's bewildered expressions. "How can you not hear them? They're screaming so loudly! They're deafening!" he shouted, breathing harshly as he ran his nails along his scalp.

"There isn't anyone screaming," Blue told him. She jerked her head to her side towards something that had caught her attention. Her face fell as she turned her eyes back to him. "We can't hear them, Ronan. You're the only one in contact with them.

"How can you not hear them? There's two of them and they're crying! They're-" He stopped, cocking his head as if that would make it easier to hear. "This way. This way, they're this way," he said urgently, taking off at a dead sprint that took him into a nearby alley, Adam and Blue struggling to keep up with him. ' _Please let me get there. Please let me get there_!' he chanted silently. The part of himself that he'd never been able to purge, the maternal instinct that he'd only ever been able to hide, clawed at his insides, screaming at him to find them. That part of him had such a shrill voice, Jesus.

"Ronan!" Blue and Adam shouted behind him, their voices growing further away the longer he ran and the louder the screaming became.

' _Mommy!_ '

Ronan couldn't breathe. His legs were turning to lead beneath him, but he couldn't stop running. He was getting closer with every heaving step. It was happening today. He was going to find them, his children, his twins, his precious ones, by hook or by crook. He would find them even if he had to kill someone doing it. He would-

' _Mommy!_ '

Skidding to a stop, Ronan spun to face a cellar door. There was nothing else in his head other than those children screaming. Dropping down the steps, he pressed his hands to the door. The screaming stopped all together.

"Mommy?" one of the two voices asked tentatively on the other side of the door, "Mommy, are you here to help us? Please help. Ida's bleeding a lot, and I can't help her."

Ronan couldn't breathe. "I-I'm here. I'm right here. I'm going to get you out of there," he choked out, releasing a shuddering breath as he pressed his forehead to the door, "I'm not going to let anyone else hurt you."

Blue and Adam stopped at the top of the stairs, staring down at him. "Ronan?" Adam asked, taking the first step down, but Ronan stopped his with a hand, waving him back.

"Cian, is there a way to open the door from in there? Can you reach the locks?"

There was silence for a moment. "I can reach one, but I can't get the chain."

Ronan nodded to himself. "Step back, Cian. Find something to get behind with Ida. I'm going to break down the door. I'll give you thirty seconds, alright?"

"Okay," the small voice replied.

There was shuffling on the other side of the door, then nothing. Ronan counted down slowly, and on thirty, he kicked at the door. Once. Twice. On the third kick, the door swung open with a resounding crash. "Cian? Ida?" he called desperately.

"Mommy!" two voices cried. Turning just in time, Ronan caught the two bodies that flung themselves into his arms. "We knew you'd find us!"

**Gansey** :

Awestruck was the perfect word for what Gansey was feeling as he watched Ronan fumble over Ida and Cian, washing the blood from their hair and sanitizing the stitches they each sported. He'd brought them straight to Malory's after the hospital and child services.

According to Blue, when child services tried to take Ida and Cian from him, the three of them had raised such a kerfuffle, that they'd ran. They'd be back the next day to check on them.

Ronan's touches were gentle, his voice soft. Gansey hadn't even thought Ronan possessed this kind of side, not that he had known Ronan for long, but it felt as if he had known him since before he could remember.

Malory had cleared out of the apartment, muttering something about young people taking over his flat and that he'd be home in a few days once the pigeon convention was over. The dog went with him. Gansey wasn't sure what Malory was doing going to a pigeon convention at ten in the evening, but with him no longer present, it gave them all free reign to talk to Adam and Noah. Malory knew of their sensate status, of course being Gansey's colleague, but it still got to him most days when they started talking to thin air.

"They look like a family," Noah pointed out, sitting on the table as they watched Ronan and Blue fuss over the twins, talking to them quietly, giving them reassurance. Adam was contributing, despite the fact that the twins couldn't see nor hear him. Blue sat with both of them on her lap, running a brush threw their newly dried, tangled hair.

"They are a family," Gansey replied without hesitation, " **We're** a family, and no amount of distance between us is going to change that fact."

Noah smiled wholeheartedly. "Where... how did you guys find them?"

Gansey looked to Noah. "Ronan heard them. They were screaming, calling specifically for him, I think. They're sensates, that's for sure. He found them in a cellar. The foster family that was supposed to be taking care of them wasn't there at the time, and had left them in the cellar without proper clothing and hurt. You know how cold it can get at night," he told him quietly.

Noah's eyebrows pulled together in worry, looking back to the twins with the bandages covering their arms, the side of their necks, their foreheads. He couldn't help but notice the sheer amount of scars they sported. "How were they hurt?"

Gansey's eyes went hard and cold, and Noah had to force himself not to flinch away from them. "Someone was throwing glass objects at them that shattered around them. They won't say who it was, even though they're safe now. It just..." He trailed off, his mouth forming a hard line. "It just pisses me off."

Noah let out a little squeak of laughter, waving off the others when they turned to frown at him. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, "It's just... I've never heard you curse. I didn't even know you knew any curse words, or that you could say them with that kind of voice."

Gansey huffed a laugh through his nose, shaking his head.

**Noah** :

"Hey, Noah, you should be going to bed. You know you have class tomorrow," Natalie said as she pushed into his room, raising an eyebrow at him as he and Adam jerked in surprise, blinking at her, "And you too, Adam. I really shouldn't have to tell you two this. You're both grown men." She paused, thinking. "Well, sort of. Most of the time. Some of the time. My point is, is that you shouldn't need me to come and tell you that you should be sleeping instead of doing... whatever you two are doing."

Noah shook his head to clear the remnants of Malory's apartment from his vision, but he could tell that Adam was still there, leaning close to Ronan, taking in every detail of the twins. "Sure, but you're still going to do it anyway, Mom," he replied just scathingly enough to make Natalie bristle.

"Well, fuck you very much. I'll remember that next time you don't wake up to your alarm," she snapped, moving to slam the door closed.

"Something happened with Ronan and Blue and Gansey. We're checking in on them and trying to help them with what's going on."

Worry creased Natalie's forehead. She glanced to Adam where his eyes were a bit unfocused as he tried to pay attention to both conversations at once. "What's wrong? Did something happen? Is Ronan okay? Is Gansey okay? **Is** **Blue** **okay**?" He voice rose at the end, her eyes going wide at just the thought of Blue being hurt. Somehow, she'd gotten a hold of a viable number for Blue, and had taken it upon herself to get to know all of those in Noah's cluster. Out of her three hours of talking to Ronan, Gansey, and Blue, she'd become attached Blue the quickest.

"They're fine, Nat," Noah said, "They just found Ronan's twins."

"What? Really? Are they alright? Do we need to go to London? Let's go to London. I'm going to go buy us train tickets now. We'll leave in an hour. Come on. Up and up." She waved her arms as if the motion itself could pull them from their beds.

"Natalie, hold on," Noah called, scrambling from his bed as she disappeared into the common area, her phone already in her hands.

Adam snapped from his reverie, frowning as he tracked Noah's bolt from the room. "What's going on?" he called, sliding from his bed and following after them.

Noah wrestled Natalie's phone away from her, holding it above their heads as they both breathed hard. "We can't just go running off to London, Natalie!" he snapped as she jumped for her phone, grabbing at his hand, "Those children have been through enough already without having three strangers burst into their new safe haven unannounced. We need to give them time to comprehend what's going on and to get to know the others before we do anything. Anyway, we have classes. We can't just drop school to go gallivanting in London."

Natalie blinked at Noah, a slow smirk spreading across her lips. "That's a big word for you, isn't it? ' _Gallivanting_ '? I didn't even know you knew what that word meant."

"Oh, fuck you," Noah grumbled, dropping her cell to the couch and turning back to his room. "We need to go to bed. We have class in the morning."

"We're going to London this weekend!" she shouted childishly, "Even if I have to drag you there kicking and screaming! You'll help me, right Adam?"

Raising his eyebrows and his hands in surrender, Adam turned to follow after Noah. "I'm staying out of this one. I don't do well in sibling fights."

**Adam** :

Adam couldn't get the image of the twins from his mind. He lay in his bed, wide awake and only able to stare at the ceiling. They were dark haired and pale skinned. They had sharp, bright blue eyes. Their features, though softened by virtue of being young, bore the undeniable sharpness of Ronan's features. When they smiled, there was a tilt to their lips that had to have come from their father. Other than that, they seemed to be carbon copies of Ronan.

He pressed his hands into his eyes, trying to forget the scars that had marred them. According to the twins, when they were younger, only two or three, one of their foster mother's had been about to hurt Cian and Ida had jumped between them. She'd lost her eye that day, leaving her right eye scarred shut. Cian had a scar running along his hairline from when he'd been thrown into a coffee table, and his pinkie was crooked from when it had been broken and never healed right.

They had been bounced from home to home, and somehow, they'd only ever gotten lucky a few times. Those had been the shortest stays though, before they'd had to move on.

Ronan had left the room while they went through each of their scars in turn, telling Blue and him the story behind each one. When Adam had followed, he'd found Ronan in his room, his fists curled tightly at his sides. He'd slammed his head into the doorjamb over and over, soft enough that the twins wouldn't hear, but hard enough that a bruise had begun to start to form. "This is all my fault," he whispered, tears that he'd been unable to hold back slipping passed his tightly shut eyes, "This happened to them because I'm selfish. If I had just held them, taken my parents offer to help raise them, none of this would have happened to them."

"You did what you thought would be the best for them," Adam had told him gently, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. "You didn't know this would be the outcome."

"And look how well that worked out for them," Ronan had snapped, glaring at Adam, "Ida's already missing an eye. She'll never be able to use both of them again. You should know what that's like. You're father took half of your hearing away."

Adam had pressed his lips into a thin line. "Yes, I do know what that's like, but you being angry about something you can't fix now is not going to help anything. It's just going to scare them. Don't you think they've been scared enough already? The best you can do for them is to help make them better and to treat them better than they have been. You can't change what you did when you were fourteen, so stop trying. The only thing you can do now is carry on, for them if not for yourself."

Ronan had licked his lips, letting a shuddering sigh passed his lips before pulling Adam into his chest. He buried his face in the crook of Adam's neck, his shoulders hitching once before he'd squared them and returned to the living room.

Warmth swelled in Adam's chest at the memory. There was nothing he wouldn't do for Ronan and the twins. There was nothing he wouldn't do for everyone he held dear.

The side of his bed closest to the wall dipped with sudden weight, and heat enveloped his side. "Thank you," Ronan said quietly after a moment, his breath fanning across Adam's cheek, "For today. For tomorrow. For however long you decide to stick around." His voice was quiet, nearly a whisper, but Adam heard it loud and clear.

He turned to face Ronan, resting his hand on the curve of Ronan's hip. "You don't have to thank me, and I'm not going to be going anywhere, not as long as I have a say in it. Where's Blue?"

"Sleeping on the couch. She gave the twins and me the bed for the night."

Adam nodded, and without much thought behind the action, pulled Ronan forward into a kiss. Their kiss was chaste for the most part, only a cursory sweep of the tongue to remind each other what they could have if they only took hold of it. When he pulled back, he whispered against Ronan's lips, "Get some rest. You're going to need it."


	13. Chapter 13

  
**Noah** :

Noah was fading. He was nearly gone again as he lay back on the couch, releasing a shallow breath as the now familiar darkness crept in around the edges of his vision. The others scrambled around him, anxiety peppering their bonds as those strings that tied each of them to each other loosened and frayed.

"I am not afraid. I am not afraid," he whispered to himself while the ties that tethered his soul to his body snapped. His next breath was a shuddering sob, "I am not afraid," before he was gone completely, back into the waiting embrace of the darkness.

**Gansey** :

Darkness engulfed Gansey as his bond to the others dissolved like salt in warm water. This... this disappearing act Noah performed had slowly gotten worse since the first time it had happened. At first, it had only been the shattering of his bond to the rest of them, but it had spread, attacking the bonds everyone had with each other. He hadn't told the others that he'd begun to experience the blackouts as Noah did. His were different though. Instead of a slow fade or sudden jerk, he was shoved into the darkness.

They were scared, and he was scared, and he didn't want to frighten them anymore than they already were. If they knew that he had joined Noah in his blackouts... He didn't know what that would cause.

Ronan and Blue were in class, or most likely running the grounds trying to find one another now. He could only imagine what kind of chaotic haze they would be in if they knew that he was following in Noah's footsteps, what they would all be in.

The darkness wrapped its arms lovingly around him, accepting him back like an old friend. The nothingness was frigid and buzzing, clawing at him with nails sharpened on his fear. It tore at him, dragging him forward.

Pain exploded across the back of his head, and he dropped to his knees. He clutched the back of his head, dropping to the ground with another blow. His arm broke through bramble and weak walls. Tiny little insect legs crawled up and over him, coating him in buzzing rage. The first prick was such a tiny hurt, minuscule in comparison to Noah's pain, and then it spread, engulfing him in agony.

He didn't have enough breath in his lungs to scream, but oh, he so wanted to.

"Noah," he gasped, digging his nails into the ground as his heart sped, racing ahead of him. Then his heart stopped all together.

**Adam** :

Adam couldn't breathe, his heart a ragged, racing mess in his chest. He clutched at the front of his shirt, gasping as he stumbled towards the couch and Noah. He collapsed to his knees beside him, grabbing the front of Noah's shirt. He shook him once, twice, trying to drag life back into his body. His heart was slowing, slowing, slowing. Dragging air into his lungs, he shouted, "Noah!"

Noah woke with a gasp, grabbing at Adam's wrist. He coughed relentlessly, his shoulders trembling with the force. His breath wheezed through his throat alongside Adam's. "Gansey," he whispered, "Gansey."

Adam nodded, leaning forward over his knees, his mouth gaping wide. "Panic... Attack..."

Noah nodded to him as Ronan and Blue ran onto the scene, their breath short from running instead of from Gansey's panic attack. "What's going on? Are you two alright?" Blue asked, dropping down beside Noah.

"Gansey," Adam gasped out.

"Fuck!" Ronan spat, pacing to and fro along the carpet, "Fuck!"

Blue ran trembling hands through her hair, along her face, over his lips. "We're not home. We're not home. Oh god, we're not home. Gansey-" She pressed her lips into a tight line as tears welled in her eyes. She turned her attention to Adam and Noah. "Take deep breaths, as deep as you can. Force your lungs open, don't take shallow breaths. You're only going to hyperventilate doing that," she coached in a voice that trembled as badly as her hands.

"The twins!" Ronan shouted, screeching to a halt, "The twins are home!" He flickered out of existence, leaving the trio working on their breathing and low key having mini heart attacks. He returned in a rush. "They've got him. They're waking him now. He should be back with us soo-"

Gansey popped into existence on the end couch like the cork from a champagne bottle, pulling the front of his sweat soaked shirt away from his body. Blue shot to her feet, cupping his face in her hands. "Are you alright? Gansey, are you alright? Do we need to come home and take you to the hospital?" she asked even as he shook his head.

Adam struggled to his feet, using Ronan's shoulder for support. "You should have told us, Gansey. That was... you should have told us."

Gansey breathed carefully, slowly, dropping his head to tuck between his knees. "It would have been unnecessary worry and stress for the rest of you. It hadn't... gotten bad," he tried to explain, his words breathy and strained.

"It was bad the moment it started happening!" Blue cried, anger coloring her cheeks scarlet, "Gansey, you should have told us!"

They remained silent for a long moment, Blue wiping at the angry tears that had welled in her eyes with the back of her hand. Adam pushed forward to stand in front of Gansey, staring down at him. "Gansey, did you and Noah..." He swallowed thickly, glancing away. "Did you and Noah nearly die on the same day?"

**Blue** :

"Oh my god," Blue whispered, sitting on the bench in the school's courtyard. Students rushed around her, hustling towards their next class or the library or to shove something in their face before work. Ronan paced back and forth beside her, his arms cross tightly over his chest. "How did Adam even figure that out? Why would he have even thought the two were connected?"

"I-I don't know. I need to get home. The twins are probably freaking out. I'm going to pass out if I stay here any longer."

Blue nodded. Her body felt weighed down, exhausted, she couldn't have sat through another class or work even if she'd wanted to, but she had to stay. She sighed. "I'll stay behind and field questions from our teachers. They're probably wondering why the hell we ran from class without warning."

"Are you sure?" Ronan asked, though he looked about ready to bolt. Reluctantly, he added, "I can stay, and you can go check on those three." She nodded, and he shot a quick, "Thank you," over his shoulder before he was gone.

Sighing, Blue looked over to Adam where he was already intently working on theories as to why only Gansey and Noah were the only two experiencing the blackouts. "Is there... is there anything I can help with?" she asked tentatively.

He shook his head, running a hand through his hair. "No. I think this is going to have to be something that I work on alone. I'm sorry."

"It's fine. I need to get to class, anyway. Tell me if you find anything?"

He nodded, and was gone.

**Ronan** :

Ronan groaned, shuffling his hands through his hair as he stared down at the paperwork spread out across the table. The twins were gone with Gansey, bonding or shopping or whatever Gansey took them to go do. He was almost positive that Gansey was buying them new clothing, but he couldn't be sure that they wouldn't come back pinging off of the walls on a sugar high. Their puppy dog eyes were lethal, and Gansey was unable to resist them at the best of times. After earlier in the day, it was decidedly a bad time which just made him that much more prone to spending.

Letting his head drop to the table top, Ronan groaned again. So much paperwork. Why did it have to be so damn hard to adopt his own kids? He'd birthed the little devils, he even had the birth certificates and stretch marks to prove it, and yet the adoption agency was still holding out against him. It made him want to scream in frustration.

"Hey, what are you groaning about and how can I help? Because you're distracting me in class, and it's starting to piss me off a little," Blue asked, sitting on the edge of the table, her legs crossed at the knees. Dark bags hung beneath her eyes, and she rubbed at them with the back of her hand.

"I can't figure out all of this paperwork, and it's so ridiculous! I don't understand why I have to do so much just to adopt my own children. They came out of my own vagina for fuck's sake! I have their original birth certificates and all that bullshit!"

Blue sighed, dragging her eyes over the majority of the paperwork. "Well, you have to see it from their perspective. You gave them up when they were born, then you went and got a sex change. You transition isn't even five years old. To them, you could still be unstable." Ronan's head shot up, his mouth already forming a retort, but Blue stopped him with a shove of her palm in his direction. "I get that you're not. I understand that you haven't been even before your transition, but the point I'm trying to make is that they don't know you. They don't know who you are, what you're about, why you suddenly want your children back. All they know if that you're a man who was a woman once, you gave up your children, and you're not married."

The hole that had always resided in Ronan's chest pulsed at the mention of him giving his children up for adoption. He just barely refrained from wincing with each word she threw at him. The hole had been filled since they'd found the twins, but it hadn't healed. He suspected it never would, not when he had to look at the scars left on his children's bodies because of his mistakes.

"What the fuck does my single status have to do with adopting my own children? You would think the fact that my father is dead and my mother is comatose in a mental hospital and that my older brother wants to tear my throat out every time we see each other would be more of a worry."

"There have been studies that have supposedly shown that children who grow up in a household with married parents, or at least 2 parental units, are more successful growing up. You are sorely single, living with three other people and a dog, and you just recently started going to college."

Ronan grumbled, "I can't just get married to appease them, and this is all temporary. On top of that, all of you guys are going to be helping me raise them, so I don't fuck up royally again."

"True, but again, they don't know that."

"Then how am I supposed to adopt them if they don't know anything about me? Why would they ever allow someone like me to adopt two kids?"

"It's not a 'someone like you' kind of problem, Ronan," Blue snapped, "But it will be if you start thinking of yourself that way because they'll see that. They'll see it and interpret that as indecision, that you're having second thoughts about this." She worked her jaw, forcing long, slow breaths through her nose. "Now, what we're going to do is we're going to finish this paperwork, and then you are going to find pictures of the Barns that you may or may not have. Then you're going to take that all straight to the adoption agency."

Ronan scowled. "I just got it today."

Blue rolled her eyes. "Yes, but if you turn it in as soon as possible, they'll see how serious you are about adopting the twins."

Closing his eyes and licking his lips, Ronan tugged up the sleeves of his shirt and snatched up his abandoned pen.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone gets to join in.

**Adam** :

Adam cupped his head in his hands, staring down at the papers spread out across his desk. Even with Gansey back in D.C. collecting more information from the women at 300 Fox Way, this was impossible. His college work wasn't half as hard as this concept, and his classes were markedly harder than the classes he'd been taking at Aglionby. Not that the concept of sensates was an easy topic to grasp, and variations to said concept to include only two of a quintuplet experiencing blackouts possibly because of a shared near death experience on the same day on a ley line did not make it any easier. Just the fact that they were a quintuplet instead of the usual octuplet was not making this any easier.

Groaning, he let his head drop to the desk top. He should just give up on this. Even if they knew why the blackouts were happening, whether it was because of a fluctuation in the energy of the ley line or because something had fundamentally been broken in the pair that day, they had no way of correcting it. There was a possibility that they would live with this the rest of their lives if it didn't resolve itself.

"Hey, you're ruining my good mood," Ronan said without malice, leaning over Adam's shoulder as he rested his chin there.

Adam glanced at him with a heavy sigh. "I assume everything is going well with the adoption then?"

"They've stopped complaining about the twins staying with us, finally after a month of bitching. It keeps going better each time we go to the agency," Ronan told him.

Adam smiled, looking back to the papers on his desk. Collecting them together, he said, "It's just because they all want to jump your bones in that suit."

"I don't do casual sex," Ronan murmured, pressing his lips to the side of Adam's neck, sending a shiver down his spine.

"That must be unfortunate for the rest of the world," Adam replied, his voice stuttering and wobbly.

Ronan's lips traveled along Adam's shoulder, looking for any small sliver of exposed skin. "It's a good thing you're not the rest of the world."

"I thought you just said you don't do casual sex?"

"Adam, everything with you is anything but casual."

A grin pulled at the corners of Adam's mouth as he turned into Ronan's searching lips. Pulling as his shirt, Ronan yanked it over his head, fingers exploring the tanned, freckled skin beneath. Adam pawed at his hands, making only a halfhearted attempt to still them as his face grew bright and hot. "Wait, wait," he gasped against Ronan's lips, "Ronan, hold on."

"What?" Ronan growled, "What is it?"

"Noah and- and Natalie. They live here too."

Ronan glanced over at the door, closed tightly behind them. There was most definitely a sign taped to the outside of the door that Noah had made as a joke, but had gained practical use that read 'Parrish's _**Study**_ Time' in uneven, colorful letters for when Noah or Natalie had mandatory study groups over. "He's sitting on the couch. And as far as I could tell when I popped in with him earlier, Natalie isn't here right now." Turning back, he pressed forward again. "We're in the clear."

Adam closed his eyes tightly, his blush traveling down his neck, across his chest. They fluttered open. His skin was on fire where Ronan's hands had already trailed, and it was positively molten where his hands still rested against his hips. "But he'll hear us, and how is this even supposed to work? You're hundreds of miles away."

Shrugging noncommittally, Ronan pressed his lips to a collar bone. "Actually, he'll hear you, unless he decides to pay attention. It'll probably be something like masturbating, but you won't have to work at your fantasy."

"Jesus, Ronan," Adam whisperd, closing his eyes tightly against the sight of Ronan slipping down between his knees, "What about Blue and Gansey? They're all going to feel this!"

Glancing up as he popped open the clasp on Adam's pants, he smirked. "I suppose they'll get a good show then."

**Noah** :

Noah jumped, gasping as pleasure spooled in the pit of his stomach. He shot a half-hearted glared at the door to Adam's and his room, sighing forlornly. Those two. They were the most handsy couple he'd ever met who hadn't ever met each other in person.

They were lucky that Natalie wouldn't be home for the rest of the day. She'd gone to visit her girlfriend in Italy or some such place. She'd always been a little sketchy about the people inhabiting her cluster, even more so now that he knew she hadn't been on the phone all those times he'd seen her talking to the wall.

Laying back against the couch arm, he settled in for the longest ten minutes of his life. Ronan and Adam never went at it long, rarely ever doing more than a bit of groping and shoving their tongues down each others throats. There had once been an attempted handjob, but Adam's mortification after Gansey had walked in on that little fiasco had stopped any further advances in that sense.

Ten minutes came and went, and still, they continued. The intensity of the pleasure slowly grew in the middle of his stomach. He felt as if he were suffocating, and breathing for the first time all at the same time. In the room, he heard Adam moan Ronan's name. He gasped as a wave of pleasure, intense and crushing, rolled over him.

Closing his eyes tightly, he tried to breathe, tried to draw breath into his starving lungs even if it was only a minuscule amount. When he cracked his eyes back open, he crouched beside Ronan and Adam, running his hands along their sides.

Pulling away from Ronan's mouth with what seemed to be all the force he could muster, Adam glanced down at him in bewilderment. "Noah, what-" He was flushed, his words a slurred mess. He sat in Ronan's lap, knees on either side of his hips.

"I might be asexual, but that doesn't mean I can't help, and you guys are making it impossible not to," Noah explained, blush rising along his neck.

"I don't know-"

Ronan cut Adam off, standing abruptly and wrapping Adam's legs around his waist. "Move to the bed," he instructed, cupping Adam's thigh to hold him against his body. He walked them towards the bed, Noah following in their wake. Noah had already crawled onto the bed when he lowered Adam onto the royal blue comforter, capturing his mouth once more.

**Blue** :

Blue lay beside Gansey, head leaned against his shoulder reading the book he had propped up on his stomach. He'd been drifting in and out of sleep for the past hour or two, so she reached forward and flipped the page. Sighing heavily, he blinked slowly, his eyes remaining closed for long seconds and open for only half a second. "I'm so sleepy," he murmured, turning his nose into her hair.

"You can sleep on the plane home," Blue replied, "You have to be at the airport in a few hours anyway, and by the time you're on a plane, I'll have to be back in class."

"I know, but it's so hard to keep my eyes open," he said, his words slowing as he made soft, sleepy noises.

Sitting up, Blue stared down at him, her lips pursed to one side. She pulled the book from his hands, setting it on the bedside table. Without so much as a warning, she straddled his hips. Leaning forward so that the short lengths of her hair brushed his cheeks, she captured his mouth as he gasped, grinning as his hands shot up to her waist. Pulling back just enough to whisper, she asked, "Sleepy still?"

"No quite so much anymore," he whispered back, his words trembling and nearly indistinct. "We... we haven't talked about this yet."

"I don't see where there's much to talk about." She paused before sitting up, staring down at him. "Unless this isn't something you want and I've just been reading all of those kisses wrong. That they were actually platonic when I thought they weren't." Insecurity crept its way into her veins, but she refused to show it to Gansey. If he was paying attention, he'd be able to feel it, and that was already more than she wanted. With how hopelessly oblivious he was at times, he may have not noticed the switch at all.

Gansey followed her lead, sitting up. Worry and apology fought for control of his features as he wrapped an arm around her waist. "That's not what I meant. I do want this. It's just..." He trailed off, his embarrassment strong enough to send a warm flush through Blue's body.

"Just what?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

"I've never done anything like this before, or even had a relationship. I've never really had an interest in things like this until you. I don't want to mess anything up, and I want to do things right."

Blue laughed, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and burying her face in his neck. Once she had her laughter under control, she found her words. "The unshakable and ever confident Richard Cambell Gansey III is self-conscious! I never thought I'd see the day." She grinned, kissing his jaw. "It's not like I have anything to compare any of this too, Gansey. I was always too sensible to get caught up with boys. That was, of course, until it came to you. And Adam. And Ronan. And Noah. I have become much less sensible since meeting the four of you, but I wouldn't trade this for anything. I want everything you want to offer me, Gansey."

A shuddering breath escaped Gansey's parted lips. "That is... that is good to hear, Jane." The next breath that escaped him mirrored Blue's gasp of pleasured surprise. They stared at each other, eyes wide and confused. "Did you feel-"

Blue nodded, pressing her lips tightly together. The pleasure was intense, tasting of build-up, and feeling prolonged. "I think Ronan and Adam had a similar idea," she whispered, trying to refrain from laughing as one of the others' hands roamed up her sides, sending shivers throughout her body.

"It seems so."

Ronan was beside them in the next moment, wrapping his hands around the back of their necks, grinning devilishly. "Come join us."

**Gansey** :

Gansey ran his hands up Blue's sides, or maybe it was Ronan's sides, or maybe Noah's, or maybe someone had their hands on his sides. He didn't know anymore. He'd lost track of the sensations berating his body, of the people that had kissed him, of the hands that had dug into his hair. He'd closed his eyes, and let them guide him through whatever this was that they were all doing together.

If Helen walked in on him back in his room, he wasn't sure he would know how to explain his flushed skin, his mussed hair, his rumpled clothes. He wasn't sure what he looked like at this moment, but he was sure that it was incriminating in the very least and in the worst way possible.

A moan slipped passed his lips as he arched into the body above him. There was someone sitting on his hips, someone light. Blue? Noah? Did it matter? No. Another leaned over his face, stealing his lips, someone that smelled of wild flowers. That was Blue.

"You can't keep them all to yourself, Gansey," Adam groaned, pulling Blue away towards him as Gansey's cracked his eyes open. She leaned over him to reach Adam, her torso all light brown skin and bare as the day she was born. He pushed himself onto his elbows to kiss a stretch mark he found on her waist, kissing further down inch by inch. Her skin was littered with stretch marks, long ones, small ones, wide ones, and he pressed his lips to each one that he passed.

She gasped into Adam's mouth as Ronan kissed her shoulder and Gansey kissed her abdomen.

Gansey couldn't watch or he'd never make it anywhere in this fiasco of theirs. They were a mass of bodies, moving and slipping and sliding over one another. They were one in the same and separate beings all at the same time. What Gansey felt, Adam felt, and what Adam felt, Noah felt, and so on, and round and round.

**Ronan** :

They all lay against each other, panting and grinning and giggling with the absurdity of what they'd just done. The digital clock on Noah's bedside table blazed through the dimness of Adam's desk lap, glaring at them with a time that read ' _02:41_ '. A laugh spilled from Ronan's mouth. He couldn't understand how they'd lasted so long. Maybe they'd all just subconsciously been savoring this thing that they'd been doing together.

His head pillowed on Blue's stomach, Gansey broke the comfortable lull around them. "Would what we all just did be considered masturbating because we weren't in person, or still be considered a first time?" he asked slowly, his words lazy and warm. Reaching out, he traced loose patterns against Ronan's pale thigh.

The others glanced between each other. Shrugging as best they could lying down, they answered in unison, "Both."

Ronan laughed, lying with his head on top of Adam's chest, his arms curled around his waist, his fingers fussing with Noah's light hair.

"We just finished having an orgy. What could you possibly be laughing about?" Adam grumbled, his voice rumbling through his chest beneath Ronan's ear. He sounded sleepy and drunk. "You've been laughing a lot actually, and it's kind of starting to worry me."

"Yes, we just had an orgy with Richard Gansey, Jane and friends."

Blue and Gansey grumbled wordlessly at the choice of names, their voices falling away as more energy was pulled from their bodies.

Adam raised his head to glare exasperatedly down at him. "What are you getting at Ronan? I swear to god, if it's something that is going to ruin my afterglow, I will kick you out of my head. It'll just be the others and me cuddling without you. Then you'll be sorry."

With a perfectly straight face, he said, "We can call this 'Fun with Dick and Jane, and friends'."

The others groaned loudly. Adam let his head fall back against the bed as Ronan's expression broke and he laughed manically. "I hate you right now, I hope you know that!"

"That not what you were saying a few minutes ago."

"Technically, I wasn't saying anything a few minutes ago."

"Depends on how many minutes ago we're talking about."

Adam pushed him up and off of him with a mock growl. "Oh my god, go away. Go take care of your children or take up underground fighting again or raise pigeons or something."

Ronan grinned wickedly. "They're sleeping on the couch right now. I've got all night."

Adam stared at him with hungry eyes while Blue rolled her eyes with a quietly muttered, "Boys."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter was one I'd had brewing in the back of my mind since chapter one of this things. Actually, it might have been one of the reasons I wrote the fic in the first place. It didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it to, but I still enjoyed it. Anyway, I don't know where Blue with stretch marks came from, but I like the idea, so I'm going to keep it. I think it's cute. Also, I find it kind of cool that stretch marks are hereditary. Hope y'all liked the chapter.


	15. Chapter 15

**Blue** :

Blue startled in the middle of her shift, her spine going ramrod straight as the shouting began in the back of her mind. She could make out three distinct voices, two that were high and young, one that was deep and weary. It had been several months since the twins had started to live with them, but she'd never once heard them raise their voice to Ronan in anything but a playful manner. "I, uh, I need to-" She handed her tray off to another waiter, not needing to feign the churning of her stomach as much as exaggerate it.

"Are you alright?" he asked worriedly, setting her tray in the small window leading into the kitchen.

She nodded wanly, but threw a hand over her mouth a second later, muttering, "I'm going to puke," as she darted for the staff bathroom. Sighing heavily, she locked the door behind her with a soft ' _click_ '. Leaning against the edge of the dingy white porcelain of the sink, she blinked herself into the living room of Malory and Gansey's flat.

Cian and Ida crowded around her legs immediately, their small faces red and their cheeks wet with angry tears. She absolutely shouldn't have been surprised that they could be so angry at such a young age -they were Ronan's children after all, and only god knew who the father had been- but it still felt wrong to see them in such a state. She cupped their faces in her hands, shushing them until their tears had dried up and the red against their pale skin had faded to pink.

"Now, what's wrong, munchkins? It's not normal for you two to fight with your dad. It's not right either. I'm all for independence, but he just got you two back, and I think he should have some time to enjoy you before you start growing rebellious on him."

Cian's lip quivered, and Ida cried, "He won't tell us why he gave us up!"

Blue's head snapped up, staring at Ronan, but he refused to meet her eyes, ducking his head and staring across the room at the birdcage that held one of Malory's prized pigeons. It cooed softly in sleep, unaware of the commotion occurring around it.

Releasing a heavy sigh, Blue tucked her fingers into the long black hair that the pair sported.

"I told them they wouldn't understand," Ronan muttered quietly, fear and trepidation pulling his face blank, but he couldn't hide from Blue. She was in his head, and there was no place more terrifying nor wondrous once you knew how to navigate it.

"But we would!" the pair shouted at him, "Just because we're young doesn't mean we won't understand! We're smart, and we know a lot."

Ronan turned his fierce blue eyes, tempered by compassion, toward the pair. "I never said that you weren't. I know that you're smart. You're the smartest kids I know, but this is just... this is just something you won't understand. Not for a long time. Maybe not even when you're older with your own children. Maybe you'll never understand it, but I am certain you will not get it right now." His voice had hardened, finality in his words.

The twins turned back to Blue. "Aunt Blue, please help us get him to tell us! We want to know. We want to know why he didn't want us."

"He wants you now, isn't that enough?" Blue asked gently. She'd never been very good with children, but she was also still learning how to work her way around Ronan, and these two were just carbon copies of him at times with younger brains and even younger bodies. "He came for you. He found you. Doesn't that count for something?"

"Yes, but we want to know why he didn't want us then," Cian said, his tears slipping down his cheeks again, this time in sadness instead of anger.

Blue brushed back the hair from their faces, watching as it simply slipped back into place. Was this a product of Ronan's genes or their father's? She supposed it didn't matter either way. "I get it, I get that you want to know, but there are just some things kids your age shouldn't hear. Terrible things happen in this world. You two have already experienced a few of them, and there's no reason to tell you more just yet while you're safe and whole. I can tell you something though, but if I tell you, you have to promise that you won't keep asking Ronan this question. He'll tell you everything when you're older, I promise. I'll make sure that he does."

They glanced at each other, a conversation exchanged between them in only that short second. They nodded, looking back up at Blue. "We promise. We'll wait."

Blue nodded. "Good. Now, what I have to tell you is that your father gave you up for a good reason. He was very young when he had you two, much to young for anyone to ever be a parent. He truly believed that it was the best thing for you two. He wanted you two, he wanted you two so badly that it hurt, but he wasn't in a good situation, and he believed it was the best path for you two at the time. I can promise you that he regretted that decision every day of his life. He wanted to be able to raise you, but he had to get better before he could do that. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

The twins turned their eyes down to their shoes. They nodded. "How do you know all of that though?" they asked, envy in their words.

Tapping her temple with a wide smile, she said, "I'm in your dad's head. There's nothing he can hide from me."

The twins scurried back to Ronan, wrapping their arms around his legs. "We're sorry," they whispered, looking up at him, "Are you better now?"

"I've never been better in my life," he told them, and Blue could tell that it was the truth.

**Adam** :

Adam sighed in frustration, crumpling the piece of paper he'd been scribbling furiously onand chucking it towards the waste basket. Noah batted at it, guiding it into the trashcan. He crowed in delight, surveying the war zone surrounding the metal cage. It was littered with balled up paper that had been unlucky in its decent.

Unfolding one of the papers, Noah frowned at Adam. "Are you still trying to figure out why the blackouts keep happening to Gansey and me?"

"Of course. It's important, and what happens if we never figure it out? What happens if you guys are stuck like this forever? What happens if you black out while driving? What are the long term effects of this? Noah, this is dangerous, and once we know the cause, we can find a solution." Adam ran his hands through his hair. Even if they did find a cause, he wasn't sure a solution would present itself. Blue's family hadn't had anything helpful to say, and Natalie's cluster had treated it like a joke, though eventually they'd divulged that their research had turned up nothing of use. On top of that, Gansey had returned empty handed.

Noah was quiet for a long moment, the only sound in the room that of him crushing and unfolding the paper until it was soft and easy to tear. Finally, he murmured, "I don't think there's a solution to something like this, Adam."

Adam shook his head. "Don't say that, Noah. There's always a chance-"

"There's not, at least not that I can think of myself. I've been through it over and over again, I've remembered what happened a million times, trying to find that explanation, and I can only ever come up with one."

Sighing heavily, Adam set down his pen, turning to hear Noah out.

"Gansey has always had a strong affiliation with the ley lines, right? We know that. In his research, he found that the more closely linked you are to a ley line the stronger you are as a sensate. Even just being in close proximity to it makes you stronger. It's why we all feel so vividly and why Blue's family is so strong, while Natalie's feel of her cluster is more like a memory. He was the one who heard us first while the rest of us were still oblivious to each other. He was the one to _physically_ feel first." Noah swallowed harshly, crushing the paper between his fingers. "And at that time that he first physically felt something, we were both dying on the ley line. Our blood was soaking into the ground. Berry was trying to do a ritual, and I'm not sure that he didn't succeed. Even a little."

Adam rubbed a hand down his face, propping his head up between his hands on his knees. "You're saying that Berry's ritual did this to you guys."

"No, I'm trying to say that I think it broke something in us. There was too much happening all at once, and something just... shifted, and couldn't shift back." Noah sighed, releasing the shredded paper from his grip. "This is permanent, I'm almost positive of that. And I think... I think we should just leave it alone. If it doesn't fix itself, I don't think it was meant to be fixed."

Adam looked up at him, worry creasing deep crevices into his face. "If that's what you want, I'll stop trying to find a solution, but... are you sure?"

Noah nodded. "I'm sure."

**Noah** :

Noah was splayed out on his bed, a book that he was barely paying attention to propped up on his chest when Natalie sat down at his feet. She looked solemn, her usually smiling mouth down turned in a frown. Closing his book slowly, he sat up. "What's wrong? Did something happen?"

She shook her head. "No, I just... I thought I should tell you that... I don't think I'm going to be coming back this time."

"Like..." He trailed off, hardly able to think the word let alone say it.

Natalie rolled her eyes. "No, not like that, you dummy. I mean, like, I'm not coming back from Italy, or Spain, or wherever you think I am right now. I think I might finish out this year of college online, and then... not go back. Or if I do, I'll go back in America. I was happy there, and I'm happy with you and Adam, but at the same time, I can still feel Mom and Dad looming over me, waiting for me to slip up."

"No, I get it. It makes sense. I was considering going back to America with Adam or Blue, but I think they're going to stay here. I think that these places might be their homes now."

"That's good. Adam deserves to be happy, and I haven't met Blue yet, but I want her to be happy as well. You're going to stay with them? Wherever they drag you to?"

"As long as they want me around."

Natalie punched Noah in the arm with bruising force. "Shut up, they want you around. Don't say stuff like that."

"It's only the truth."

She huffed, rolling her eyes again. "Whatever. Oh, but do you want to know what my cluster and I are going to be doing once we finally all meet up and start living together? Because that is totally going to happen, like it is going to happen with you and your cluster."

Noah shrugged. "What are you guys going to be doing?"

Natalie smiled conspiratorially. "We're going to be searching for Marie Antoinette. There's a legend that says she's still alive, but simply sleeping, waiting to be woken. Possibly she's waiting on a ley line?" She waggled her eyebrows, her voice rising an octave.

"Like Gansey's king."

"Exactly!"

Noah smiled, ruffling her hair as she squealed and squirmed away. "Keep me updated on your search then, and I'll see you when we next see each other."

"It's a promise," Natalie said before she was gone.

**Ronan** :

Ronan was splayed out on the couch, the twins cradled against his chest as The Nightmare Before Christmas played in the background. It wasn't anywhere near Christmas or Halloween, but the movie was good for dozing off, which is exactly what they'd done. Even if they came to here and there just for a song, the movie was great and no one was going to tell him otherwise.

It was a dreary night outside the window, even for England. Rain fell in thick sheets against the roof and thunder rumbled low, rattling the flat every few minutes. Their breath had been visible in the air when they'd stepped out to get pastries from the bakery down the road.

Blue and Gansey had curled up on the floor together, their backs against the couch and a shared blanket pulled tight around their shoulders.

"You two make me sick," Ronan mumbled without malice, sleep and his napping twins softening his voice to a low growl, "You should get a room that's not in this flat. Then you two can finally do the thing while in the presence of each other."

Blue shot him a look over her shoulder that spoke of threats and exasperation. "Says the man who hasn't even been in the presence of the guy he's seemingly in love with. How do you know we haven't already?"

Ronan scoffed, rolling his eyes and stroking his hand through Ida's thick, unruly hair. "Oh please, don't kid yourself. If it weren't for me starting something with Adam, you two would still be virgins."

Blue shrugged. "We'd been planning on something that night."

"You don't plan to do the do, you just do it," Ronan replied, "And anyway, it was Adam's and my influence that made you guys head in that direction."

Rolling her eyes, Blue turned back to the television, murmuring the words underneath her breath. She'd been doing that the whole movie, just following the script without pause, even when she left for the bathroom or went to the kitchen.

Ronan was convinced that it was simply to piss him off. Not that it wasn't working perfectly. "Maggot, I swear to-"

A loud, incessant banging against the door drowned out his words. The twins startled awake, huddling against Ronan's side and holding tight to each other. "Bad man," they whispered.

Ronan scowled, anger boiling in the back of his throat. "Who's 'bad man'? Someone from one of the foster homes?"

They shook their heads. "No. Just... he feels like a bad man."

Before Ronan or one of the others could stand to go see who the fuck was trying to destroy their door, it crashed open. Jumping to his feet, Ronan stood his ground as they stormed down the hall towards the living room.

**Gansey** :

" _Kavinsky,_ " Ronan snarled, wrapping his fingers in the other man's jacket collar, "What the _fuck_ do you think you're doing?"

The man -Kavinsky- smiled crookedly.

There was a moment of recognition. Gansey couldn't quite place it, but he was sure he'd seen that smile somewhere before. He was positive he'd never seen the man standing before him, but that smile... There was just something about it that was familiar.

"I came to say hello to my baby mama and our kids," he spat back.

That's what it was. He'd seen the same smile on the twins' mouths more times than he could count now. They didn't hold the same condescension or whatever was in Kavinsky's smile, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

Kavinsky's pupils were blown wide with whatever was circulating through his system, and his hair was plastered to his forehead from the rain. "Did you really think you could hide something this big from me?"

"Well, I did for all of these years, didn't I? Who told you?"

"Oh, just a little bird. No one special. You'd be surprised at what I did to Declan to make him spill."

Ronan ground his teeth. "Why are you here? I should be throwing you out of here. This isn't your home."

Kavinsky raised an eyebrow, taking in Blue and Gansey standing in front of the twins who were shrinking back against the cushions. He turned his eyes back to Ronan, smirking. "So this is who you've decided to take up with instead of me? How very _domestic_ of you. Do you do both of them? Because she is a very hetero partner, and you are anything but hetero. I can attest to that. Or is she for him? Bisexuals are always fun."

"Why are you here?" Ronan snarled again, "Don't make me repeat myself."

"Why? To get my children."

Snatching up his phone, Gansey dialed the number he'd saved the moment Ronan had decided to adopt the twins. The process was nearly done, but if Kavinsky was actually smart enough -he already had the money- and tried to take this to court, there was no saying how long it would take for Ronan to be given custody. On top of that, if he played it well enough, Ronan might not be awarded full custody.

Ronan shoved Kavinsky back hard, sending him stumbling against a wall. "Stay away from them. I lost years of being in their life because I was trying to save them from you. I'm not going to let you take more or to ruin their lives just because you want to prove something."

"Ruined? How would their lives be ruined by being with their father?"

"You're a drug addict, and a drunk, and you'd think that hitting them would be a kind of kindness."

"It was for you," Kavinsky purred, pulling Ronan close to him, "And we all know that I'm not the only reason you gave them up. You can't blame me for your own mind."

Cian and Ida were off the couch before either Blue or Gansey could stop them. They threw themselves at Kavinsky, hitting him in every place they could reach, with all the force they had in their small bodies. "Stop it!" they screeched, "Leave Daddy alone! We don't want to go with you!"

Stepping back, his fingers still curled around the back of Ronan's neck, he smirked. "Technically, you little heathens, I'm your father and he's your mother. He sure as hell wasn't the one who provided the 'Y' chromosome, that's for sure. What a strange concept, huh?" He grunted, curling into himself as Ida nailed him in the groin.

The twins guided Ronan away, their hands tucked in his. "Leave Daddy alone. We don't want to go with you. We want to stay with him."

Pressing the phone to his ear, Gansey asked, "Did you get all of that? Do you think it's enough?" He paused, listening to the person on the other end. With a curt 'thank you', he ended the call, slipping the phone back into his pocket. "Ida, Cian, do you want to hear some good news?"

They looked up at him, their eyes wide with excitement.

"You won't have to leave your father. Your adoptions are going to be finalized in a matter of days, just in time for the summer holiday. You won't have to leave Ronan until you're older and ready to."

Cian and Ida grinned up at Ronan. "Can we stay with you forever?"

"Whatever you want," Ronan told them before turning hard eyes to Kavinsky, "Get out of our flat and stay away from the Barns. You're not welcome in our lives, and if you try come back, or try to take Cian and Ida from me, the consequences will not be pleasant."

His eyes narrow, and his mouth a sneer, Kavinsky struggled to his feet. "Whatever. It's not like I ever wanted them or you in the first place. Who would want someone like you anyway? Disgusting," he spat, turning to leave.

"You did for a long time," Ronan snarled back, the flush of anger warming his neck.

Kavinsky didn't reply as he slammed the front door shut.

Gansey sighed loudly as Blue flopped back onto the couch, blowing her bangs out of her face. "Pizza?" he suggested.

"And a Studio Ghibli movie marathon?" Blue added.

Ronan shrugged. "Whatever they want," he said, nodding towards Ida and Cian.


	16. Chapter 16

**Gansey** :

Gansey laughed good-naturedly as the twins bounced continuously in their seats, leaning over Ronan every few minutes to get a look out the window. He'd been like that when he'd been younger, eager and excited for new things. He wondered when things had changed, or if he just hadn't found something new in a while.

"For the last time, sit down and be still," Ronan snarled, wrestling the twins back into their seats and tightening the belts as much as he possibly could without crushing them. "We've still got another four hours on this fucking thing. When are you two going to pass out? You're going to be cranky when we get off."

"But we've never being on a plane before!" Ida shouted, still bouncing incessantly in her seat, "It's so cool!"

"And you can see the whole world from up here!" Cian interjected, leaning over Ronan's vacated seat to peer out the window again. He giggled. "The clouds are so dark, and you can see the lightning in them."

"Well," Gansey started, stretching down towards his carry on with searching fingers, "Technically, it would be a little hard to see the whole world from up here." He pulled up a satellite view of the Earth on his laptop, turning it towards the twins as Ronan settled back into his seat, jerking out his own carry on. "It's quite beautiful when you can see the entirety of the Earth, and it's quite mysterious too. There are things hidden all over the world that people only think are myths or legends, or that can never be found again, but all you need is to look in the right places."

The twins stared wide-eyed at the screen, pawing at each other as if they weren't both staring at it already. "What kind of hidden things?"

"Sleeping kings, and spirit roads, and your father's humor."

Blue laughed from across the aisle as Ronan sneered over at him, pulling a notebook from his backpack and a box crayons. He set them on Cian's fold down tray. "This is all I could scrounge up before we left so don't break all the crayons in one go."

The twins' attention was only diverted for a short second as they each pulled out a crayon and flipped open the notebook. They stared at the picture of the Earth before grinning at each other. "We're going to draw the world and all its hidden things," they decided together, smiling toothily at Ronan and Gansey.

"Gansey, if you turn them into smaller version of you, there will be hell to pay," Ronan warned.

Blue leaned over the aisle as a sturedess passed. "Oh come on, Ronan, don't you want your kids to be intelligent and earnest. We all know they won't be getting that from you or Kavinsky." She jerked back into her seat as Ronan threw a crayon at her. The twins didn't seem to notice that they were one crayon short now, focused on their drawing. Picking up a white crayon, she rolled her eyes.

"That's how useless your comment was."

"Children, please, be civil," Gansey coaxed, laughing as the crayon was chucked back across the aisle, this time at him.

**Noah** :

Noah groaned loudly, stretching his arms above his head. People streamed out around them, bustling towards another plane or the next event on their itinerary. "That was the longest flight of my life. Never again."

Adam laughed beside him, hefting their shared carry on higher on his shoulder. "Well, we're going to have to do it again in two weeks unless you plan to stay with Blue's family for the rest of your life." He shrugged. "Who knows, maybe you'll love it there and decide to marry one of her cousins or something."

"I don't think that would work out," Noah said, glancing up at the signs as they passed, checking to make sure they didn't pass the turn off for baggage claim.

They turned down a hall lined with little stores and places selling food to ravenous fliers. They'd only made it halfway down when a cry from the end of the hall caught their attention, "Adam, Noah!"

Glancing up from the little pieces of art they'd found stashed away around the airport, they started as two bodies hurtled into them. Adam was picked up from his spot, and Noah dropped to the ground under their combined weight. "Blue," he wheezed, grinning at his petted her spiky, dark hair.

"I never thought that I'd see the two of you running at anyone in anything less than an assault. I have been pleasantly surprised," Gansey said with a light laugh, leading the twins towards the four. Their were still on the floor, arms wrapped around each other, and Ronan still held Adam off the ground.

As Adam's feet made contact with the ground once more, Ronan cupped his face between his hands. "Much better in person," he murmured, pressing as close as he could possibly get.

The twins squealed in disgust. "Uncle Gansey, they're kissing!" they shouted, laughing.

Blue and Noah struggled to their feet while still wrapped up in each other. He held out an arm to Gansey. "Come on, Gansey. Come and hug us, and let those two make out for a little bit," he said, flapping his hand towards him.

"Yeah, come on, Gansey," Blue laughed, holding out an arm herself. The twins rushed into the middle of their legs as Gansey stepped into their embrace, pressing a kiss to her temple. When they finally broke apart, and Ronan and Adam were simply staring at each other, she clapped her hands together. "Alright, everyone, time to move out. Mom, Persephone, Calla, and Mr. Gray will probably be here soon. If you two need to make out anymore, do it now or forever hold your tongues."

They returned her gaze steadily, but didn't move. She nodded and turned on a heel, wrapping an arm around Noah's neck and leading the way.

**Ronan** :

"Snake," someone snarled down the sidewalk from him.

Jerking his head up, he sneered at the trio of women accompanied by one man hustling towards them down through the baggage claim area. He watched as an older version of Blue threw her arms around her, pulling her against her chest tightly. The other two women crowded around her while the man stepped over to them.  
He held out a steady, sturdy looking hand that Gansey grasped without preamble. "My name is Mr. Gray, it is a pleasure to meet the four of you finally. "

The twins pushed through Ronan's legs, waving up at Mr. Gray. "We're here too! We're here too!"

Crouching down, Mr. Gray held out both of his hands to them. They each took one, and he shook their hands gently. "And a pleasure to meet the two of you as well. What might your names be?"

"I'm Ida and this is Cian, and that's our daddy!" Ida shouted excitedly, pointing at Ronan before quickly dropping her hand, looking sheepish, "I'm not supposed to point at people. Auntie Blue says it's rude."

"You're right, it is," Blue agreed, "And maybe inside voices would be a good idea. We are still in an airport after all, and it's loud enough without shouting. What do you say?"

"Okay," Ida said quietly.

Blue went around the two groups, introducing each set of people in turn. "You mean the snake," Calla snarled when Blue finally made it to Ronan.

"Who says I'm a snake?" he hissed back, returning her glare with the same level of intensity that would have melted a lesser person into a puddle of talking goo.

Calla returned his sneer. "I do."

Blue sighed, rubbing at her forehead as they continued to throw insults back and forth without pause, even as Maura and Persephone herded them towards the cars. "This is going to be a thing, isn't it?" she asked Gansey. She slipped into the middle seat, Noah and Gansey sliding in on either side of her. They could still hear Ronan and Calla arguing and spitting at each other loud and clear as they all piled into the other car.

"Yes, it seems like it," Gansey sighed.

**Blue** :

"What do you think the others are doing?" Blue asked in the lull after their breath had calmed and their minds had come back online. She pressed against Gansey's back, her arm slung over his waist, her fingers tracing invisible patterns into his tanned skin.

He shivered with her touch, dragging in a careful breath. "Noah and Maura are probably giving the twins all the sugar they can possibly find, and I think we both know what Ronan and Adam are doing seeing as we still can't get through to them," he observed, tapping lightly on the mental block Ronan and Adam had erected up around them to keep the trio out at all costs.

Blue sighed, her breath brushing against the nape of his neck. "I think we know what Ronan and Adam are doing ninety percent of the time."

"You may be right about that," Gansey laughed, placing his hand over top of hers to still her movements. They were silent for a long moment, just listening to each other breathe. Finally, Gansey asked, "What are you going to do next year when your year abroad has ended?"

Blue sighed, pressing closer to him, burying her face against his back. "I'm not sure. I miss home, but London is amazing and I don't know if I could live that far from you guys for that long."

"Adam is transferring into Noah's school. He'll be in Germany until he finishes his degree."

"I don't think Ronan is going to let him get away with being that far away," Blue said, laughing as she imagined what would happen within a month of the pair being apart now that they'd finally met in the flesh. "They might just end up having to transfer over to London, or we'll all just relocate to some other country that has our sister school."

"Dear lord," Gansey murmured, "Could you imagine all of us living under one roof with the twins."

"It would be mayhem."

"It would be destruction."

"It would be end of a century."

"And the beginning of an era," Gansey finished, his shoulders shaking with laughter, "On second thought, it might not be such a terrible idea."

**Adam** :

Adam sighed, resting his head against Ronan's shoulder. "That was ten times better in person, and we managed to keep the others shut out this time," he commented, snorting as Blue burst through the door that was his mind, frazzled and disheveled and indignant that she'd been shut out for so long.

They were sprawled across a bed in one of the two hotel rooms Gansey had booked. Blue had been positive that they could simply stay at 300 Fox Way, but after Noah had offered to take the twins and go into the city with Maura, they'd been grateful for the privacy.

"It always is," Ronan told him, "Now that we know we can do it, at least it will be easier to lock them out on our honeymoon."

"What?" Sitting up and staring down at Ronan's bemused face, Adam could feel his cheeks heating. Swallowing thickly, he asked, his voice a little strained, "When did we decide that we're going to get married?"

"I did when I decided that I can't live without you"

Adam pressed his hands over his face, trying to hide the blush that was running rampant across his cheeks, but there was no doubt that it had spread to the tips of his ears as well. "Who would ever actually want to marry me? I'm neurotic and I flinch when someone even raises their hand to give me a high five." Even after months of going back and forth with Ronan, even after the months before that when he'd been with Natalie, he still couldn't believe anyone would ever want him. He didn't think he'd ever get used to the feeling of being wanted.

"I do," Ronan said sternly, "And I'd hope that's the same for you of me."

"We've only known each other for a little under half a year."

"And I've wanted you since the first time I kissed you in that Irish pub with the maggot and the king and the ghost all dancing around us. I told you, I don't do casual relationships." Sitting up, Ronan tugged Adam's hands from his face, leaning in close to attempt to catch his eyes. "Is it the same for you?"

Adam swallowed again, unable to meet Ronan's intense blue gaze straight on, so instead he simply glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "It is, but you could have proposed in a better way. Blue's going to be pissed when I tell her how you did it."

Pulling back, Ronan rolled his eyes. "Sorry, I'm a bit naked right now and I don't have a ring, but if you really want me to, I'll get down on one knee and you can take a picture to show to Blue's family. I'm sure it'll be great to explain it to the twins when they're older."

"You can just do it properly in front of everyone later, and I'll act surprised," Adam compromised.

"Don't hold your breath."

"I can't help it when you're around," Adam said languidly, laughing as he flopped back into Ronan's lap, throwing an arm over his eyes dramatically, "You take my breath away."

Ronan stared down at him, a hunger in his eyes that sent of rush of warmth through his body. "Sap. Now you sound like the maggot."

Blue's voice rose in protest, and Adam couldn't help but laugh. He was home, and he was whole, and he was free of bruises, and he would stay for as long as they let him.


End file.
